The Energy Center Initiative at Politecnico di Torino: Practical experiences on energy efficiency measures in the municipality of Torino (original) (raw)
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Energy Systems for Smart Cities
2015
This White Paper has its roots in the two-day workshop held in Trento, Italy, in December 2014 involving representatives from local governance, associations, industry and start-ups. Future Energy Systems in Smart Cities are expected to be based upon distributed energy generation, realtime demand/response and user engagement for a collective awareness about the value of energy resources. In this technological ecosystem, ICT scales up from a commodity to a fundamental pillar to “smartify” the cities. Within this context, empowered communities of users, local governance together with citizens, can perform common actions aimed at maximizing the efficiency of distribution and consumption of energy. Several actions can be implemented with the active engagement of the local communities and stakeholders. This paper aims at presenting how the Municipality of Trento can adopt technological innovations and new end-user engagement policies.
Recent progress on the sustainable energy systems in smart cities
37th IAHR World Congress, 2017
Sustainable development remains a comprehensive and complex interplay between the population growth, urbanization, economical development, and the living environment. During the last few years, the concept of "sustainability" has become the common interest among the scientific community. An important criterion for the translation of "sustainability" into the action plan is the establishment of the compatible energy supply and applications. This transition to sustainable energy systems has to be initiated in the urban areas, with the total energy consumption of up to 75%, and the emissions of greenhouse gases of 80%. Today, approximately 50% of the world's population is staying in the urban cities, and the figure is expected to be exceeding 60% by 2025. In parallel to this development, the novel concept of "smart city", with the new integration of sustainable energy systems have been highly promoted. The present work was conducted to update the unique concept of smart cities, and the successive implementation of sustainable energy systems. The comprehensive profiles of the applications of a variety of green energy, including the solar, geothermal, wind, hydrogen fuel cell, and biomass energy are elucidated. Additionally, the available supporting practices, together with the major key barriers for the innovation of sustainable energy practice are outlined. 1 INTRODUCTION Sustainable development can be regarded as the development that meets with the present needs without compromising the advantages of the future generations. The concept of sustainability has gained popularity with major focus being placed on the developing cities with dense population growth, fast economic growth and huge consumption of a variety of resources. In parallel to this evolution, the unique concept of "smart city' has been established, with the integration of information, communication technology (ICT) network and smart energy systems as the essential components to sustainability. Energy, a stimulus of the sustainable development, is a supporting tool contributing to the successive implementation of the concept of "smart city". According to International Energy Agency, a 53% increase in global energy consumption is foreseen by 2030, consisting mainly 34.8% of crude oil, 29.2% of coal and 24.1% of natural gas. These growth trends have attracted an aesthetic concern connected to the limitations of sustainable energy supply, and the resulting competition of natural resources (Foo, 2015). Extensive researches have been directed to the exploration of renewable energy, to fulfill the global energy demand and ascertain the preservation of the natural environment. In particular, renewable energy has been put in the limelight in upgrading the efficiency of the existing power resources. Various efforts were undertaken to embark the development of renewable energy resources, notably solar, wind, geothermal, bioenergy, and hydrogen for energy generation in these smart cities. With the aforementioned, this present paper attempts to highlight the novel concept of smart cities. The unique linkages with the sustainable and renewable energy system, and the successive implementations of solar energy, wind power, geothermal, biomass and hydrogen are addressed. The supporting practices and major key barriers are outlined. 2 SMART CITIES 2.1 Conceptual understanding In early 1970s, the notion of "wired city", which stressed on the role of ICT network, was introduced to foster the rapid development of urban populations. The concept of "intelligent city", with the integration of cognitive sphere from "wired city", and primarily relies on top-down policies, was then introduced. This intelligent city vision excluded the element of the "people-centered" dimension. The emergence of "creative city" has highlighted the opposite trend (bottom-up participation), that relies mainly on the community-based and private sector initiatives, living labs and social entrepreneurship. Smart city is the hybrid model of both intelligent and creative cities (Ben Letaifa, 2015), with the consideration of "environmental sustainability"
Smart energy systems for smart city districts: case study Reininghaus District
Energy, Sustainability and Society
Background: Dense settlement structures in cities have high demands of energy. Usually, these demands exceed the local resource availability. Individually developed supply options to cover these demands differ from place to place and can also vary within the boundaries of a city. In a common sense of European governance, cities are pushed to save energy, increase renewables and reduce import dependency on fossil fuels. There are many innovative concepts and technologies available to tackle these needs. The paper provides a comprehensive methodology for planning and assessing the development of 'smart' energy systems leading to complex energy provision technology networks using different on-site as well as off-site resources. Methods: The use of the P-graph (process-graph) method allows the optimisation of energy systems by using different energy sources for heating, storing and cooling. This paper discusses this method in the development of an urban brown field, the premises of the Reininghaus District, a former brewery in the city of Graz in Austria. The case study is interesting as it combines on-site energy sources (e.g. solar heat and photovoltaic) with nearby industrial waste heat and cooling at different temperatures and grid-based resources such as existing district heating, natural gas, and electricity. The case study also includes the competition between centralised technologies (e.g. large scale combined heat and power and heat pumps with district heating grids) and decentralised technologies (e.g. small scale combined heat and power, single building gas boilers, solar collectors, etc. in buildings). Ecological assessment with the Energetic Long-Term Analysis of Settlement Structures (ELAS) calculator provides an evaluation of the ecological impact of the developed energy systems. Results: Different scenarios based on two building standards OIB (low energy house standard) and NZE (passive house standard) as well as different prices for key energy resources were developed for an urban development concept for the Reininghaus District. The results of these scenarios show a very wide spectrum of structures of the energy system with strong variations often caused by small changes in cost or prices. The optimisation shows that small changes in the setup of the price/cost structure can cause dramatic differences in the optimal energy system to supply a smart city district. However, decentralised systems with low-temperature waste heat and decentralised heat pumps in the building groups show the financially most feasible and, compared to alternatives, most ecological way to supply the new buildings.
Energy and Sustainable Development in Smart Cities: An Overview
Smart Cities
Smart cities are an innovative concept for managing metropolitan areas to increase their residents’ sustainability and quality of life. This article examines the management and evolution of energy generation, various storage systems and the applications they serve, and infrastructure technology’s current condition and future prospects. Additionally, the study also examines energy-related construction and transportation systems and technologies. The Smart Cities Energy Prediction Task Force predicts electrical usage using STLF, SVM, and e-learning machines. To keep a system working well throughout the year, fossil fuels must be utilised as a backup energy source. Technologies can only benefit if integrated into the city’s infrastructure. By 2050, it is anticipated that the global population will surpass 10 billion, with most people settling in metropolitan regions. Between 2020 and 2027, the global market for smart energy is anticipated to expand by 27.1% annually, from USD 122.2 bil...
2014
Smart cities are those well performing cities that create, through structural and technological innovation, the ideal conditions for setting up socio-economic enhancement and energy efficient values, with the aid of renewable energy and smart grid orientated smart sectors. A Smart City, in brief, is a city which combines and harmonizes specifically six characteristics, mobility , environment , people , living , governance , economy , based on the “intelligent” combination of the resources provided by the city itself and by the activities of the self-decisive, independent and aware citizens (in the case of a smart community). This represents a significant challenge for the city and the local authorities. However which are the cities eligible for this role? Which are the characteristics and the city size? This paper provides a tour of the possible candidates focusing in particular on the prerequisites, on the spheres involved, on the existing and feasible strategies necessary in orde...
Buildings Interaction with Urban Energy Systems: A Research Agenda
2015
The goal towards a fossil free energy system is expressed in amongst others European and national targets, and puts pressure on the application of renewable energy sources combined with energy efficiency. Many cities are even more ambitious than their national targets and want to be among the first to demonstrate that they can become not only smart fossil-free energy cities but sustainable in a wider sense, including water, waste, transportation and more. In the current paper, the research agenda to support such goals through smart city efforts is presented for a few European cases as examples, focusing on the impacts that buildings play in the overall energy system. Here buildings are not only consumers but rather prosumers that are able to produce renewable energy themselves. Buildings moreover offer potential storage capacities that can be utilized in demand shifting, which is necessary to enable increased penetration of renewable energy in the energy grids.
Enhancing the performance of sustainable energy management of buildings in smart cities
Indonesian journal of electrical engineering and computer science, 2024
Energy utilization has been the most influential parameter in recent decades, especially in the smart city model. The energy management system has been a more attractive research problem due to its utility, ability, and applications. This paper has an objective that the article discusses innovative energy management methods for sustainability and highlights the potential for integrated smart energy sources. The discussion also touches on the understanding of energy management and production, various storage systems, and their potential future applications. This paper explores challenges in sustainable smart energy management, focusing on methodologies like smart energy systems, PV calculations, electric grid models, and energy management strategies in smart cities. The passive infrared receiver (PIR) sensor has been used in real-time energy management systems to integrate these methodologies into the city's infrastructure. The energy management design aims to coordinate electrical appliances such as fans and lights to minimize energy consumption. The article proposes new energy management and security techniques based on data sources to enhance city intelligence, adaptability, and sustainability by reducing human involvement in controlling electrical appliances in residential buildings. The proposed design and development system optimizes energy utilization more efficiently and effectively than conventional systems, meeting real-time energy management objectives.
Sustainable Energy Production in Smart Cities
Sustainability
Finding a method to provide the installed Internet of Things (IoT) nodes with energy that is both ubiquitous and long-lasting is crucial for ensuring continuous smart city optimization. These and other problems have impeded new research into energy harvesting. After the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown that all but ended daily activity in many countries, the ability of human remote connections to enforce social distancing became crucial. Since they lay the groundwork for surviving a lockdown, Internet of Things (IoT) devices are once again widely recognised as crucial elements of smart cities. The recommended solution of energy collection would enable IoT hubs to search for self-sustaining energy from ecologically large sources. The bulk of urban energy sources that could be used were examined in this work, according to descriptions made by researchers in the literature. Given the abundance of free resources in the city covered in this research, we have also suggested that energy ...