Hi everyone,
as my recent activities on this forum indicate I have just recently discovered the metasfresh ERP stack and have to this point been able to successfully deploy it with traefik 2.4 on a dedicated Debian 10 machine. So far I am positively overwhelmed by the functionality, configurability and wholistic execution of the software stack and I am eager to discover all its possibilities, especially towards specialized highly regularized sectors. Right now I am planning to Roll Out Metasfresh as an ERP in a sales and distribution tilted environment.
Though I originally come from a professional background which sits at the nexus between renewable renenergy, shared mobility and real estate. Pressing issues which hinder the transformation of the energy and mobility sytem as well as real estate as a whole towards ecologically and socially substainble infrastructure for a open democratic society, are limited participation, beaurocracy (esp. in Germany) and the lack of commonly available IT Tools.
Still European legislation defines a legal term called “Energy Communites” and cleary states:
Energy communities organise collective and citizen-driven energy actions that will help pave the way for a clean energy transition, while moving citizens to the fore. They contribute to increase public acceptance of renewable energy projects and make it easier to attract private investments in the clean energy transition. At the same time, they have the potential to provide direct benefits to citizens by advancing energy efficiency and lowering their electricity bills.
By supporting citizen participation, energy communities can moreover help in providing flexibility to the electricity system through demand-response and storage.
Citizens and renewable energy communities
Through the Clean energy for all Europeans package, the EU has introduced the concept of energy communities in its legislation, notably as citizen energy communities and renewable energy communities.
More specifically, the Directive on common rules for the internal electricity market ((EU) 2019/944) includes new rules that enable active consumer participation, individually or through citizen energy communities, in all markets, either by generating, consuming, sharing or selling electricity, or by providing flexibility services through demand-response and storage. The directive aims to improve the uptake of energy communities and make it easier for citizens to integrate efficiently in the electricity system, as active participants.
In addition, the revised Renewable energy directive (2018/2001/EU) aims to strengthen the role of renewables self-consumers and renewable energy communities. EU countries should therefore ensure that they can participate in available support schemes, on equal footing with large participants.
Empowering renewable energy communities to produce, consume, store and sell renewable energy will also help advance energy efficiency in households, support the use of renewable energy and at the same time contribute to fighting poverty through reduced energy consumption and lower supply tariffs.
Re-organising the energy system
Energy communities offer a means to re-structure our energy systems by harnessing energy and allowing citizens to participate actively in the energy transition and thereby enjoy greater benefits.
Energy communities can take any form of legal entity, for instance that of an association, a cooperative, a partnership, a non- profit organisation or a small/medium-sized enterprise. It makes it easier for its citizens, together with other market players, to team up and jointly invest in energy assets. This in turn, helps contribute to a more decarbonised and flexible energy system, as the energy communities can act as one entity and access all suitable energy markets, on a level-playing field with other market actors.
My Call would be to open a new sector branch for metasfresh which primarily enables these ernergy communites as a first use case. I have co-led and developed several large studies and application projects that have examined the topic of decentralized supply of business, housing, apartments and mobility systems with thermal and electrical energy gained from free energy in the local environment (solar, geothermal, exhaust heat, wind, short term and saisonal thermal storages and thermal energy nets, vehicle-to-grid as well as conventional electric storage…) , intensively from a legal-regulatory, business-monetary, organizational-procedural, and technical point of view, and have developed the appropriate business model. Despite the high degree of innovation, the result is steadily that the infrastructure project is feasible and affordable in every respect and generates a number of unbeatable added values and synergies from an economic, ecological and social point of view.
The investigations here went even further than the area of merely being an integrated energy supplier in a district. Thus, analogous investigations for the areas, real estate, mobility, logistics, water supply & disposal as well as recycling & waste management were conducted and integrated into the overall model.
This could be the basis for the development of a new functional branch in Metasfresh ERP for a sector I would call CON ‘community owned neighborhoods’.
At the same time I would like to raise funds through various channels to cover development costs and quickly reach critical momentum for the project.
I would flank the ERP Core of an enabling system for these energy district communites with a set of periphal systems: Namely but not limited to:
- boss.VPN+: Virtual Private Network & Company Directory (openLDAP) infrastructure for employees, partners & other third parties. Third parties, as well as any end devices and operating systems
- boss.Devices: Hardened server and end-user devices as well as hardware security keys for users to access & perform their specific work in their respective roles. All fully embraced with open licenses and upcycled devices. { linageOS & ReactNative for the apps }
- boss.Office: eMail, groupware - calendars & contacts, filing, syncing & sharing files & documents for distributed working, for any devices and operating systems with {mailcow, nextcloud, only-office, … }
- boss.Communications: - For direct internal and external communication with {Spreed + Talk, BigBlueButton, Jitsi}
- boss.Knowledge - Full-featured learning platform + wiki and more for digital learning: self-paced vs? structured vs? , lesson & week plans, face-to-face teaching: live & on-demand with { Moodle + BigBlueButton )
- boss.Web - web presence incl. company …, products …, services … , portfolio … , contact … , customer & support portal, with {NextJS - Single Page Application}
- bussiness.Boss - ERP { Metasfresh }
- boss.Marketing: CRM & Marketing Digitization & Automation { Metasfresh / Mailtrain }
- boss.Service - Ticket Management { Zammad / Metasfresh }
- business.boss.Web - Integrated store for goods and services, { Salor.io self-hosted webshop }
- boss.Wiki - External wiki {wikimedia / moodle}
But first; of course I would like to here the general feedback of the metasfresh community to the stated proposal.
Yours sincerely,
Luke