Energy positive neighbourhoods - New tools for their cost effective and incremental implementation

Abstract

IDEAS, “Intelligent Neighbourhood Energy Allocation & Supervision”, is a R&D project, focused on the development and operation of energy positive neighbourhoods. IDEAS aims at illustrating how communities, public authorities and utility companies across the EU can be engaged in this context. In addition, IDEAS focuses on the economic and environmental benefits of doing so. In this framework, IDEAS develops and validates different tools and business models needed for demonstrating the cost effective and incremental implementation of an energy positive neighbourhood. Energy Positive Neighbourhoods (EPNs) are those in which the annual energy demand is lower than annual energy supply from local renewable energy sources. The project includes two pilot sites: one in Bordeaux, France and another in Porvoo, Finland. The Finnish site makes extensive use of a local bio-CHP power plant. The CHP energy production power is, as typically, controlled according to district heat demand. IDEAS will demonstrate how the heat demand could be time shifted by interacting with the household heat controls for a residential neighbourhood, in order to function as a temporary heat buffer for the ESCo. This enables a more favourable energy production, which can be adapted to favour stochastic renewables as well, since the advantageous CHP energy is not as much bound to the real heat demand anymore. The Finnish pilot site includes a simulated wind turbine, a simulated battery and a simulated heat storage connected to the same Energy Management System (EMS). The French site is specific in terms of occupancy and energy usages. The IDEAS tools aims at providing real time information to the facility manager related to energy consumptions both at site and building level as well as energy production predictions so that he can optimise the energy functioning of the site. Moreover awareness tools are also developed to be used at different levels: tools dedicated to end-users’ awareness as well as pedagogical tool supporting the teaching staff in explaining and disseminating concepts underpinning the energy positive neighbourhood approach to the students or to people external to the site. The different tools have been deployed in the Finnish and French pilot sites and will be operated until autumn 2015. The work presented is part of the IDEAS Collaborative Project which is co-funded by the European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate-General, under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).