description
The overall purpose of the SUSTENANCE (Sustainable Energy System for Achieving Novel Carbon Neutral Energy Communities) project is to create novel sustainable and carbon neutral energy communities. The project focusses on the development of smart technological concepts to ensure a green transition of the energy systems with higher shares of local renewable energy. To this end, more efficient integrated energy solutions for the electrical, heat, water, waste as well as transportation infrastructure have to be developed. The solutions require both an excellent socio-economic impact in the local communities, and simultaneously ensure eco-friendly solutions and proper infrastructure, to support to sustaining the essentials of life.
The demonstration activities are set up in four countries: Denmark, India, Netherlands and Poland. These countries have different local energy resources, socio-economics, user-behaviour, political structures, market conditions, and regulations. The project will show how same technical concepts such as coupling of different energy vectors, storage solutions, demand response, intelligent control schemes and digitalization can be applied to all demonstration cases despite the huge differences in the local conditions and regulations. Road maps will be set up based on these technical solutions together with guidelines for methods for user engagement and ensuring cooperation among the users in relevant cases leading to cooperatives. Finally, business cases will be developed for the different demonstration sites seen from different perspectives (e.g., users, small enterprises, and utilities) while taking into account the local conditions. In this way, synergy effects with inputs from the different demonstration sites are expected and the results give abundant possibilities for maximum impact and replication in other local communities in the four countries as well as in societies worldwide.
In particular, the University of Twente is involved in the modelling of smart grids with a focus on the control for demand side management and demand response in integrated (semi) autarkic energy systems. The possible absence of the main grid as stabiliser asks for a detailed digital twin, with all relevant energy related streams and devices, of the given test site that must work together as one. Therefore, a special focus is on the interaction of the energy management system with the users and the specific devices. The aim is to investigate ways how near autarkic operation of microgrids can be achieved under different operational conditions. To this end we will research different modii that form an abstraction from underlaying grid problems (e.g., congestion, shortage, failure) and can be used to communicate an uniform and clear signal to which both users and EMS systems can adapt.
Involved partners next to the Decentral Energy Management research group:
- NL: faculty of Behavioural and Management Sciences (UT), Saxion University of Applied sciences, the Aardehuizen community in Olst, and technology provider Loqio.
- International: (mentioned universities/institutes and ´local communities and companies in Denmark, Poland, and India.
Time period: 2021-2025