Innovations demonstrated in:
Innovation Type: Instruction (Procedures)
What is this innovation about?
To achieve a building with a positive energy balance, it was necessary to centralize the heating and sanitary hot water system, as it is the most efficient solution. However, this centralization requires the Integrated Energy Management of the building both to optimize its efficiency and to bill the tenants for the consumption of thermal energy used to heat the water.
The energy manager is responsible for controlling and optimizing production and consumption. Given the time lag between photovoltaic electricity production and the building’s consumption, it is necessary to introduce management, anticipation and storage strategies to make the most of production. But even so, surpluses occur during peak generation hours. And this is where it is necessary to look beyond the building level and work at neighbourhood scale in order to incorporate other buildings in communities of electric or energy self-consumption that can be public facilities or other housing buildings that can take advantage of this surplus and vice versa.
In summary, Integral Energy Management is necessary to manage a centralized system of sanitary hot water and heating that is more complex to manage than an individualized but more energy-efficient system. At the same time, and to gain more efficiency, it is necessary to expand the view to neighbourhood scale to optimize the use of surpluses.
What kind of challenges it will solve if deployed widely
Integrated Energy Management is a novelty in the operation and maintenance of INCASÒL housing blocks with centralized photovoltaic generation systems and heat pumps for the generation of electricity and water heating. So it’s an innovation in our public rental housing buildings even if it’s not for the market in general. It will be necessary to verify with the monitored data that this system leads to an improvement in efficiency both for the administration that owns the block and for its tenants. It will also be necessary to evaluate the difficulties arising from the complexity of the management. At the same time, the study of the constitution of a self-consumption community of the INCASÒL building with a nearby medical centre is a solution that has not yet been adopted and is a model that should serve as a guide for the rest of the public buildings of the Generalitat de Catalunya in which we foresee a widespread installation with photovoltaic panels with the leadership of the public company l’Energética.
The following users will find this innovation useful:
The procedure can be used by any developer that needs to centrally manage the energy services of a rental building owned by it.
How has syn.ikia project impacted the development of this solution/ process/ tool?
Syn.ikia project has made it possible to design the building through an integrated energy design, obtaining a Positive Energy Building. And this design has meant that the thermal system is centralized. Thus, syn.ikia project is the one that has indirectly led us to have the figure of the Integrated Energy Manager.
How can this innovation be used beyond syn.ikia project?
Contact person:
Joan Estrada Aliberas, INCASÒL
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