Inspiring Examples and Best Practices
Hyperion
Country: Greece
Contact information:
- Olimpionikon 7, Ilioupoli
PC 16342, Athens, Greece - contact: Chris Vrettos
- info@hyperion-community.gr
- chris@electraenergy.coop
- (+30) 694 838 79 11
- https://hyperion-community.gr/en/
About
Hyperion is a non-profit Energy Community and is the first virtual net-metering solar energy community in Athens, Greece. Its creation was led by Electra Energy Cooperative.
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Mission
Creation of a replicable example of energy democracy in Greece through a viable model of collective self-consumption, offering skills, knowledge and capacities. Hyperion aims to provide its members with clean and cheap energy to develop services and actions that contribute to a fair energy transition to tackle energy poverty and offer support to vulnerable communities.
Activities
The community’s activities include the production, distribution and supply of Renewable Energy to its cooperative members, with a special focus on the development of community-based solar self-consumption schemes (collective-self-consumption).
The first solar park is located in Stymfalia and consists of a 500kWp solar PV installation powering more than 120 members, 9 vulnerable households and 2 social centers generating more than 750.000 kWh /year.
The community is also active in awareness raising, citizen empowerment, and capacity-building activities transferring knowledge and fostering networking with local authorities, organisations, Universities, and energy communities in Greece and abroad. Recently, they started working on energy efficiency and demand-response as additional ways to achieve sustainability and informed consumption.
Hyperion has also set up internal working groups addressing different topics such as 1. Energy Poverty, 2. Legal and Administrative, 3. New Technologies, 4. Public presence, with high engagement from the members.
Distinctive Good Practice
Virtual net metering provides an opportunity for residents of urban environments who are living in rental housing to participate in the energy transition by becoming prosumers as it allows for energy production to be geographically decoupled from energy consumption, thus bypassing various obstacles regarding rooftop or on-site installation of RES. Through this project citizens in Athens, SMEs in Athens and local farmers providing the grounds are investing and benefiting together.
Barriers & How they were addressed
Some initial barriers included the heavy bureaucracy around setting up an energy community which demanded a lot of working hours to bypass. The access to the grid is also extremely limited and although Hyperion members researched the capacity in the area and selected a field which already had a power plant installed, their first permit request for an 80kW PV park was denied. They, then, decided to scale up to 500kW to meet the needs of the members interested and requested a permit for Medium voltage which was supposed to be easier to access and managed to get approval. Again, at the primal stage, Hyperion explored different funding options such as crowdlending tools (namely Genervest), small grants from institutions or bank loans (in this last option they didn’t get a positive answer) to make sure all members could move forward even if they didn’t have the needed capital.
Benefits to Participating individuals
Active participation in the acceleration of the clean energy transition. Build resilience against wildly fluctuating market energy prices resulting from reliance on expensive fossil gas and the broader (neo)liberalisation of the energy market. Access to information and the sense of community in an urban place.
Information from:
- https://www.rescoop.eu/uploads/rescoop/downloads/2023_EUCENA-Balkan-Best-Practice-Guide-EN.pdf
- https://hyperion-community.gr/en/
- https://energycommunityplatform.eu/communities/hyperion-energy-community/
- https://2022.prizes.new-european-bauhaus.eu/sites/default/files/uploaded-reports/_Hyperion%20Summary%20Report%20Members%20%283%29.pdf
- https://www.dw.com/en/greece-renewable-energy-gets-a-democratic-retrofit-in-democracys-birthplace/a-68238698?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1U3fcloKJMDk8d-wQ0KHPW6jQCJFbiRJB1nUGuZEsjw4NfoUKTi7Q-37A_aem_NS1HlxFZvAplRErw7kbpmw
- https://www.rescoop.eu/toolbox/compile-toolkit-best-practice-guide
Media:
- Photos
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptwRBKVnRVU&ab_channel=ElectraEnergyCoop
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0veKDcj2xYI&ab_channel=EuropeanSolarDay&fbclid=IwY2xjawE6X8RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHYvL-22zCyBhgBl7itFLeXbKbh2ZaQ1N2N6gM6glBpJmJS4PH2THGTAbYA_aem_hAZZY9nkyR92dDTzUA0ziQ
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Idty4eUt2k&ab_channel=News247gr&fbclid=IwY2xjawE6X-FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSE_RAA3h583rTZwva7MV4kBz9b3str1VDrSEAb0FkpgoorwXrLzj2bSxg_aem_bFe9Ej3w8Yn-E3lejSjcsw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X8EzIdP9ys&ab_channel=SolarPowerEurope&fbclid=IwY2xjawE6YARleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUZkcR9lvGXLGMnukYv8FIExdzDiCeoaJIb_ODgy7E7sP3XvHKVwlK3lHQ_aem_IQ6SP-nfUneEkZjRlVHzeQ
- https://open.spotify.com/episode/6yu8LvabRdMUsTWtkvX7wG?si=SQdRUY_nQIuczHtJDt11WA&fbclid=IwY2xjawE6YI1leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcR3VMRAysVC3HdTl8gP7_8lTFq72gh6spKhy9Ny0F4YMxPaMMxo9kvuMA_aem_TWWrASMgvhANwVYjZE9aAQ&nd=1&dlsi=915ff1fd90d740b6