Collaborative Network for District Energy Operation and Semantic Technologies: A Case Study

Abstract

The growing interest toward renewable energies and alternative energy sources has led to the development of an increasingly complex district energy landscape with multiple agents and systems. In this new prospect, some frameworks such as USEF [1] or holonic multi-agent systems [2] propose new approaches, where, in the way of a Virtual Organisation Breeding Environment (VOBE) [3], diverse organizations cooperate on a long-term basis to run an energy system. This study focuses on the THERMOSS project, an EU-funded project that investigates the efficient operation of district heating and cooling networks, and demonstrates that such organisation can be integrated into the Collaborative Networks (CNs) paradigm. Additionally, a semantic approach is briefly introduced as a mean to support and improve data transfer and communication between the different entities of THERMOSS as a CN.