What deeper problem are you addressing?
Although Switzerland’s new Electricity Act now permits the creation of Local Electricity Communities (LECs), significant social barriers still limit their widespread adoption. Energy communities often remain technical projects driven by a handful of pioneers, whilst many residents and SMEs lack the knowledge, tools and opportunities needed to participate. Furthermore, concepts such as energy flexibility or collective self-consumption remain abstract and have little connection to everyday practices.TOURNESOL directly addresses several challenges identified by Future Urban Society. Firstly, by guiding residents towards concrete practices of energy efficiency, demand flexibility and energy sharing.
The project also contributes to an inclusive approach enabling all residents of a neighbourhood to participate in the energy transition, regardless of their ownership status or their ability to generate electricity.Finally, TOURNESOL is establishing a replicable framework combining participatory workshops, local support and open-source digital tools designed to facilitate the emergence and replication of local energy communities.
Through this approach, TOURNESOL transforms energy communities into spaces for collective learning, experimentation and social innovation, where residents can generate energy together, consume more efficiently and become active participants in the energy transition.
Which habits or practices do you want to change — and how?
The project aims to transform everyday energy practices by fostering a culture of ‘producing together, consuming better’. Beyond simply producing renewable energy, TOURNESOL seeks to encourage three complementary developments: energy efficiency (consuming less), energy flexibility (consuming energy when renewable energy is available) and energy cooperation (sharing production, benefits and responsibilities at a neighbourhood level).
Through participatory workshops, residents will be invited to explore their energy usage in practical terms, identify individual and collective levers for action, and co-create an energy community tailored to their local context. The project draws inspiration from the “Sunflower Society” concept developed by EMPA, which aims to better align energy demand with the availability of solar energy.
The technical and economic analysis and the open-source digital tool from Professor Stephane Genoud’s Exergy Lab of HES-SO will enable the visualisation of energy consumption and energy-sharing potential at neighbourhood level, support collective decision-making, and assess changes in practices throughout the project. The aim is to transform abstract objectives such as decarbonisation, flexibility and collective self-consumption into concrete, accessible and replicable everyday practices.
What do you want to work on during the booster — and what do you want to find out?
The project will be trialed in the Courvieux pilot neighbourhood in Martigny. In particular, we wish to test three hypotheses:
1) residents are willing to join an energy community once they understand the associated individual and collective benefits
2) they are willing to adapt certain daily practices to better align their consumption with the availability of solar energy
3) a combination of participatory workshops and digital tools facilitates the emergence of collective energy projects.
The project will be structured around three main workshops. The first workshop will assess participants’ knowledge, expectations and motivations, present the challenges facing energy communities and introduce the digital tool. The second workshop will be dedicated to exploring concrete scenarios for energy efficiency, energy flexibility and cooperation at neighbourhood level. Participants will be invited to experiment with certain practices in their daily lives and to reflect on possible forms of energy communities suited to their situation. The third workshop will analyse the results obtained, discuss the changes observed and explore possible next steps: the creation of an energy community, the development of a cooperative project or the establishment of other forms of collective organisation.
Between workshops, participants will be supported through digital tools and regular exchanges to reinforce learning, document changes in practices and maintain the collective momentum.