Smart local energy management
Remarkable efforts are being devoted to integrate fossil with renewable energy (RE) sources in a bid to achieve higher RE shares and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. However, growing investments in distributed energy resources (mainly RE sources) call for new ways to handle the increased diversity and complexity of energy management. Along with these, more sophisticated and decentralised decision-making is also needed to cope with variable energy generation and load profiles. To address these concerns, the EU-funded project RESILIENT (Coupling renewable, storage and ICTs, for low carbon intelligent energy management at district level) introduced a new tool that assesses energy performance at district scale by interconnecting buildings, distributed energy resources, grids and other networks. RESILIENT's new tool brings together combined heat and power units and RE technologies such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels and solar thermal collectors. It also combines heating networks for energy distribution, thermal or electrical storage technologies, and an energy management system for providing real-time accounts of energy demand and supply. Based on these, the system greatly assists in decision-making. Specifically, it controls the time to operate each energy resource, the power levels, the time to store energy and the priority loads. Scientists proposed innovative software tools for optimising energy usage and reducing cost. The newly developed district simulation tool allows for easily modelling both thermal and electric grids in districts and their energy efficiency, eco performance and cost effectiveness. A multi-agent system for smart grid management finds the optimal outcome and solves problems autonomously, while a replication tool serves to optimise urban planning and designing/refurbishing new/existing districts. RESILIENT's new solution efficiently manages all phases related to the energy production, transformation and distribution process. The project result was three demonstrators in Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom to assess the energy and environmental benefits and to validate models and technologies for future application throughout Europe.
Keywords
Energy management, renewable energy, distributed energy resources, RESILIENT, low carbon
