Systematic Integration of Energy-Optimal Buildings With District Networks

Abstract

The residential sector accounts for a large share of worldwide energy consumption, yet is difficult to characterise, since consumption profiles depend on several factors from geographical location to individual building occupant behaviour. Given this difficulty, the fact that energy used in this sector is primarily derived from fossil fuels and the latest energy policies around the world (e.g., Europe 20-20-20), a method able to systematically integrate multi-energy networks and low carbon resources in urban systems is clearly required. This work proposes such a method, which uses process integration techniques and mixed integer linear programming to optimise energy systems at both the individual building and district levels. Parametric optimisation is applied as a systematic way to generate interesting solutions for all budgets (i.e., investment cost limits) and two approaches to temporal data treatment are evaluated: monthly average and hourly typical day resolution. The city center of Geneva is used as a first case study to compare the time resolutions and results highlight that implicit peak shaving occurs when data are reduced to monthly averages. Consequently, solutions reveal lower operating costs and higher self-sufficiency scenarios compared to using a finer resolution but with similar relative cost contributions. Therefore, monthly resolution is used for the second case study, the whole canton of Geneva, in the interest of reducing the data processing and computation time as a primary objective of the study is to discover the main cost contributors. The canton is used as a case study to analyse the penetration of low temperature, CO2-based, advanced fourth generation district energy networks with population density. The results reveal that only areas with a piping cost lower than 21.5 k/100 m2ERA connect to the low-temperature network in the intermediate scenarios, while all areas must connect to achieve the minimum operating cost result. Parallel coordinates are employed to better visualise the key performance indicators at canton and commune level together with the breakdown of energy (electricity and natural gas) imports/exports and investment cost to highlight the main contributors.

Households’ Energy Autonomy: Risks or Benefits for a State?

“…The household share is significant in global energy consumption, however, it is difficult to characterize it since consumer characteristics are determined by several factors, ranging from geographic location to the behavior of each of the users of a particular residential building. In addition, it is important to take into account the significant amount of energy used in this sector due to the use of traditional fuels and the implementation of modern energy policies [42]. Based on this specificity, the current study is relevant and can serve as a basis for further developments in this direction.…”

The Role of Biowaste: A Multi-Objective Optimization Platform for Combined Heat, Power and Fuel

“…A reactive distillation column at 200 mbar and 180°c produces formic acid with adequate market purity. • Methane: The Sabatier reaction which combines CO 2 and H 2 as described in Suciu et al (2019). • Methanol: Adiabatic reactor as described in Rihko-Struckmann et al (2010) working at 220°c and 50 bar, followed by a flash unit and a distillation column for methanol purification.…”

“…The utilities section consists of additional technologies that allow closing the energy balance. The co-generation solid oxide fuel cell-gas turbine (SOFC-GT) is modeled according to Facchinetti et al (2011) and Suciu et al (2019) whereas the co-generation solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) and the alkaline electrolyser (AEC) are adapted from Wang et al (2018) and Suciu et al (2019). Celebi et al (2019) used a steam boiler fired by natural gas as a representative proxy of the European boiler family.…”

Approaches, Advances, and Applications in the Sustainable Development of Smart Cities: A Commentary from the Guest Editors

“…The general consensus about the importance of becoming smart and sustainable has resulted in an emergence of studies suggesting various technologies, strategies, and initiatives in order to achieve their aims [19]. Of these, Suciu et al [20] suggest that the integration of a multi-energy network and low carbon resources would help to deal with the issues facing today's cities such as the imbalance between energy supply and demand. To this extent, their study is closely aligned with the concept of zero-energy building, which aims to achieve a higher level of building sustainability by having a balance in building energy consumption and production [21,22].…”

“…This work is entitled as 'Determining Favourable and Unfavourable Thermal Areas in Seoul Using In-Situ Measurements: A Preliminary Step towards Developing a Smart City'. Suciu et al [20] in their paper entitled 'Systematic Integration of Energy-Optimal Buildings with District Networks' presents a method to combine multi-energy networks in order to reduce household dependency on fossil fuel. The last paper in this group by Sotto et al [42] focuses on policy evaluation and examines the consistency between strategic policy objectives and policy implementation in terms of the commitment to reduce carbon emissions in Brazil.…”