SOCIALENERGY: A gaming and social network platform for evolving energy markets' operation and educating virtual energy communities

Technology transfer of gamification assets to non-leisure contexts such as the energy efficiency sector has become the “holy grail” of today's research and industrial efforts towards a more sustainable energy system. In the liberalized retail market context, electric utilities are gradually adopting new business models towards transitioning their conventional energy supply business to a more service-oriented model. This paper presents the H2020-funded SOCIALENERGY project, which develops a gaming and social network platform for educating energy consumers and virtual energy communities towards evolving EU energy markets' operation. The proposed S/W platform is modular by design and facilitates the easy, rich and deep communication among involved stakeholders from individual energy consumers and virtual energy communities, to utilities, policy makers, and even other indirect stakeholders (such as electric appliance retailers and building renovators) that will allow them to: i) discover each other, ii) educate themselves in order understand the difficulties and challenges that each one faces, and iii) finally interact and trade among. A serious game for energy efficiency, advanced research algorithms and data analytics as well as a novel competence-based education framework complement the SOCIALENERGY project's innovations.