Creating and Optimizing Energy Islands
Creating so-called “urban energy islands” is based on the rationale that if every community generates the energy it needs, locally and sustainably, the global issue of climate change can partially be solved locally. Consequently, an urban energy island is a geographically delineated district that aims at achieving a high level of energy self-sufficiency while offering energy services to external grids when needed.
In a trans-disciplinary approach, the EU Horizon 2020 research project RENergetic tackles this task by optimizing the generation and composition of energy supply across the energy sectors electricity, mobility, and heat, and distributing it efficiently.
With the project being in its last term, we want to share and discuss the main outcomes to a wider public.
Objectives
- Present the concept of ‘Urban Energy Islands’, including the core principles for the different relevant perspectives: technical, social, business and legal.
- Provide an overview of the main designed functional building blocks, including demand response services for electricity, heat and electric vehicles, the multi-vector optimizer interconnecting the different energy domains, etc.
- Present these services from different perspectives, including the diverse optimization methods, the social campaigns to involve inhabitants to actively support an energy island, and the associated novel business models.
- Illustrate the different services with practical results from the technical and social experiments set up in the 3 RENergetic pilots.
- Demonstrate the Energy Island Virtual Reality Communication Tool which facilitates the understanding of how an energy island works and visualizes the impact of different possible implementation scenarios.
- Provide the participants with a hands-on tutorial on the use of the open RENergetic platform that offers a wide range of assets, microservices and manuals that can be used to set up an energy island yourself.
Agenda
- Introduction to the Concept of Urban Energy Islands – Sonja Klingert (20 minutes)
- Overview & illustration of the designed functional building blocks
- The Multi-Vector, Multi-Objective Optimizer “MuVeCo” – Hermann de Meer & Stepan Gagin (20 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A)
- Manual and Automated Demand Response with Electric Vehicle – Matthias Strobbe (technical part) / Florian Kutzner (social science part) (30 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A)
- Networking Break (25 minutes)
- Heat Supply and Consumption: Lukasz Malewski (technical part) / Florian Kutzner (social science part) (30 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A)
- Hands-on tutorial on RENergetic Platform, VR tool & Wiki – Eduardo Agustin Vendrell Del Rio (40 minutes)
Moderators
Sonja Klingert
University of Stuttgart
Dr. Sonja Klingert has been with the University of Stuttgart since 2022 as a senior researcher leading the working group on energy systems at the chair of distributed systems; before, she was a researcher at the University of Mannheim and for the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. She has been part of the leading personnel of EU H2020 and FP7 projects focusing on research areas of demand and supply side energy flexibility from an inter-disciplinary point of view, e.g. RENergetic and DECIDE.
Matthias Strobbe
Ghent University/imec
Dr. Matthias Strobbe received the master degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science Engineering from Ghent University, in July 2004 and June 2011 respectively. He is affiliated with research group IDLab, a core research group of imec with research activities embedded in Ghent University (Belgium). He currently works as business developer and research project coordinator in the domains of smart energy applications and smart buildings. He is responsible for imec’s living labs HomeLab and OfficeLab, and has worked on over 30 national and international research projects.
Florian Kutzner
University of Seeburg
Prof. Dr. Florian Kutzner is Professor of Business Psychology at the Private University of Seeburg Castle since 2020. His academic career has taken him to internationally recognized universities such as Heidelberg, Mannheim, Jena, Dunedin and Warwick, where he studied psychology, obtained his doctorate and finally habilitated in psychology. The core topic of his professorship is in the field of “Behavioral Public Policy”. More specifically, it is about understanding and optimizing the acceptance and impact of behavioral control measures in the fields of energy, mobility and digital media.
Hermann de Meer
University of Passau
Prof. Hermann de Meer (http://www.net.fim.uni-passau.de) received his Ph.D. from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, in 1992. He had been an Assistant Professor at Hamburg University, Germany, a Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York City, USA, and a Reader at University College London, UK. Professor de Meer has been appointed as Full Professor at the University of Passau, Germany, and as Honorary Professor at University College London, UK, since 2003. His research interests include Digitalization of Energy Systems, Computer Networking, Distributed Systems, Network Virtualization, Safety and Security of Critical Infrastructures.
Lukasz Malewski
Poznan University of Technology
Łukasz Malewski is an experienced environmental engineer specializing in HVAC and sustainable energy. Currently pursuing a doctorate at Poznań University of Technology, he works on the RENergetic H2020 project, analyzing energy use and developing heat recovery systems. He has coauthored publications on energy-efficient buildings and contributes to BIM implementation. Łukasz has extensive experience in designing HVAC systems and conducting energy optimization research.
Eduardo Agustin Vendrell Del Rio
Inetum & RENergetic Project Coordinator
Mr. Eduardo Vendrell del Río received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Universidad San Pablo CEU of Madrid in September 2010, a Master´s degree in Project Management from EAE Business School of Madrid in November 2017, and is a Certified P.M.P from the Project Management Institute, since November 2017. He has been involved in the management of different types of computer software projects, coordinating hybrid teams of software developers, and currently leads R&D projects.
Stepan Gagin
University of Passau
Stepan Gagin received his M.Sc. Degree in Computer Science from University of Passau, Germany in 2021. After graduation, he continued to work at the chair of Computer Networks and Computer Communications at the University of Passau. Currently, he is participating in EU research project RENergetic supporting the development of ICT infrastructure for Energy Islands. His research focuses on applications of artificial intelligence and optimization in energy systems.