System Integration in Application Areas

Built environment

Heating and cooling of domestic dwellings, office buildings, public facilities (schools, hospitals, town halls) and greenhouses is responsible for over 30% of Dutch final energy consumption. More than 90% of this energy is currently from natural gas. The aim is to create novel, integrated solutions for heating and cooling the urban environment.

Industry

In industry,  electrification of the heat demand using heat pumps will allow for a significant reduction of the renewable energy need of the industry since heat pumps are expected to have high heat output per electricity input (COP > 4.0). The challenges and research needs for heat pumps are been listed under “conversion”.

Agriculture

The greenhouse sector of the Netherlands is pioneering the use of geothermal energy. This application area is not very much distinct from the use of geothermal energy in the urban environment (similar heat demand, aspects of subsurface management). The scientific challenges are described under Sources/Geothermal energy.

The required  (large) amounts of thermal energy at a relatively low temperature level can be delivered efficiently by heat pumps. See Sources/Conversion for heat pump related challenges.

EU project Celsius
As a platform of networking and knowledge, CELSIUS takes a holistic approach to overcome technical, social, financial and political barriers to district heating and cooling solutions. celsiuscity.eu

TKI Urban Energy project PLANHEAT
Within this project, we will develop and validate an integrated and easy-to-use tool to support local authorities in selecting, simulating and comparing alternative low carbon and economically sustainable scenarios for heating and cooling. It will be validated in the three PLANHEAT cities. planheat.eu

EU project CITYZEN
The goal of Cityzen is to develop and demonstrate energy efficient cities and to build a methodology and tools for cities, industries and citizens to reach the 20-20-20 targets.cityzen-smartcity.eu/

Designing innovative and socially responsible heating systems
Because of the many issues surrounding natural gas, which is currently used to heat buildings, new heating systems will have to be designed to sustainably heat buildings in the future. This project will establish guidelines for the design of socially responsible, sustainable heating systems that can count on broad public support. nwo-mvi.nl/project/designing-innovative-and-socially-responsible-heating-systems

AMS project BIES: Buikslotersham integrated energy system
The aim of the BIES was to investigate feasible and potentially desirable scenario’s for energy supply systems for the built environment, at district level. The district of Buiksloterham was used as a test case, but the results are applicable as well to other area’s with new buildings, high energy ambitions and high densities. Both technical and organisational boundary conditions were taken into account.

 

Smart Urban Isle
The Smart Urban Isle project explores the possibilities of neighbourhoods to become ‘Smart Urban Isles’: areas –possibly around a public building– where energy is generated, exchanged and stored to locally balance supply and demand as much as possible. Research also focusses on finding an optimum between building renovation and collective neighbourhood energy solutions. TU Delft provides expertise on bioclimatic design for existing buildings and smart energy networks at the neighbourhood scale. Nine case studies are developed, two of which are in the Netherlands (Haarlem and Amsterdam).

<link powerweb research-projects nwo-esipose-projects optimising-flexible-energy-use-in-industry>Optimising Flexible Energy Use in Industry