With the European research project FLEXI, a central challenge of the energy system transformation comes into focus: the development of flexibility mechanisms that enable supply and demand to be coordinated in increasingly complex, renewable-based energy systems. FLEXI addresses this challenge by focusing on flexibility markets, services, governance structures and decision-making mechanisms, explicitly recognising the growing importance of data-driven and information-based coordination. From the perspective of the GEC Codex Partnership, FLEXI is particularly relevant where these concepts do not remain abstract, but are confronted with real system experience from Living Lab environments.
Living Labs at GEC: from models to reality
The Green Energy Center Europe (GEC) does not understand itself as a collection of individual projects, but as a systemic learning and implementation environment. The central methodological framework for this approach is the Living Lab, which deliberately connects research, real infrastructure and real-world applications. Within this framework, several functional entities play a key role:
- EWest – Power in Demand processes
- HyWest – Power to Hydrogen processes
- Quantum computing–based optimisation approaches
These entities are not parallel stand-alone projects. Rather, they fulfil complementary system functions within a coherent architecture for the transformation of the energy system. The GEC Codex Partnership acts as the operational and economic backbone of this structure, connecting research activities, digital and physical infrastructure, data, hardware and software resources, and real-world market actors, and translating them into implementable projects.
The logistics system as a unifying principle
Work within the GEC Living Labs follows a logistics-based system understanding, which can be described through three closely interlinked subsystems:
- Resource (Supply)
– real energy availability, such as renewable generation and electricity surpluses - Demand
– real demand profiles from industry, mobility, logistics and infrastructure - Coverage of Demand
– conversion, storage, transport and temporal decoupling
These subsystems are not isolated. They are connected through three fundamental flows:
- Material flows (electricity, hydrogen, physical resources)
- Value flows (costs, benefits, market mechanisms)
- Information flows (data, control signals, optimisation, forecasting)
With increasing system complexity, the information flow becomes a decisive coordinating element.
EWest and HyWest: real supply and demand logics
EWest (Power in Demand) represents real demand structures. It makes visible when, where and under which constraints flexibility on the consumption side is actually available, beyond idealised modelling assumptions.
HyWest (Power to Hydrogen) addresses the supply and conversion side. Through the real production, storage and logistics of green hydrogen, temporal and spatial flexibilities are created that cannot be captured within the electricity system alone.
Together, these entities provide real data, real constraints and real learning experiences, which are indispensable for any serious discussion of flexibility markets and system coordination.
FLEXI and the information flow: AI as a systemic resource
FLEXI focuses on a dimension where classical energy system approaches increasingly reach their limits: the coordination of highly complex decision spaces.
Here, the information flow becomes central, for example through:
- AI-based forecasting and decision support
- optimisation of flexibility activation
- market design and governance considerations
- digital services for flexibility providers and users
From the GEC perspective, the key added value of FLEXI lies in the fact that these approaches can be developed in direct connection with real Living Lab infrastructures, rather than in isolation.
Bridging to quantum computing and the REINFORCE project
The challenges addressed in FLEXI are closely related to quantum computing–based optimisation approaches, as explored, for example, in the REINFORCE project. While classical AI methods already provide important contributions to pattern recognition and decision support, quantum computing opens new perspectives for:
- high-dimensional optimisation problems
- non-linear system couplings
- multi-objective conflicts (costs, CO₂, availability, grid constraints)
At GEC, these approaches are considered not in abstraction, but in the context of real, available hardware and software resources and real-world implementation projects.
Added value for FLEXI: reality as a testbed
From this perspective, a clear added value for FLEXI emerges:
- Living Labs provide real supply, demand and demand-coverage logics
- market concepts can be tested against actual system states
- governance and service approaches become empirically assessable
- flexibility is understood as a systemic property, not merely as a market product
In this sense, FLEXI becomes not only a research project, but part of a learning system in which theory, modelling and implementation continuously inform one another.
Outlook
The systemic integration of EWest, HyWest, AI-based information flows and, prospectively, quantum computing illustrates how the transformation of the energy system can be understood and shaped as a coherent process.
From the perspective of the GEC Codex Partnership, FLEXI is therefore not an isolated initiative, but an important resonance space for embedding Living Lab experience while simultaneously incorporating new methodological impulses.
This systemic perspective also provides a foundation for further consolidation within a broader manuscript, in which digital, algorithmic and physical entities of the energy system are analysed in an integrated manner.
Positioning within the GEC context
Further information on projects and Living Lab entities of the Green Energy Center Europe can be found at:
👉 https://green-energy-center.com/projects/