Funding: ICTRegie, NWO and STW
Running Period: 2011-2014
Staff: Albert Molderink, Johann Hurink, Gerard Smit
Ph.D. student: Hermen Toersche
Website: https://www.utwente.nl/eemcs/energy/
ABSTRACT
The main goal of this project is to study, develop, prototype and test real-time control systems for the energy management of buildings connected in a micro-grid to 1) reduce the energy related CO2 footprint of buildings without loss of comfort for the owners or inhabitants and 2) to efficiently integrate new distributed micro-generation techniques based on renewable sources.
These goals are in line with the EU targets for 2020: 20% reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels; 20% share of renewable energies in overall EU energy consumption; and 20% savings in EU energy consumption compared to projections. One of the problems of integrating renewable energy resources in the generation process, however, is that they increase the dynamism of the electricity system. Many of the generators using renewable sources only provide energy at certain times of the day (e.g. a PV produces more when there is direct sunlight and windmills generate only when there is wind) and they often cannot be controlled. A substantial CO2 reduction can be achieved by using the renewable sources in a more efficient way e.g. by temporary storing energy or by clever peak shaving. It is generally agreed that ICTtechnology plays an important role to reach such CO2 reductions. In this proposal we focus on ICT technologies that can be employed in buildings that are interconnected in a small electricity micro-grid of approx. 150 buildings, which is the typical size of the low-voltage electricity grid behind a local transformer.