Project

Community-empowered Sustainable Multi-Vector Energy Islands

Acronym

RENergetic

Code

41R08920

Duration

01 November 2020 → 31 October 2024

Funding

European funding: framework programme

Promotor

Research disciplines

Social sciences
- Environmental law

Keywords

energy transition sustainability

Other information

CORDIS

Project description

In line with the EU’s Clean Energy Package goals, the EU-funded RENergetic project empowers people – engaging them from the beginning – with a higher level of control over the energy infrastructure surrounding them. RENergetic demonstrates that urban energy islands increase the share of renewables in local areas and the energy efficiency of the local energy systems. To reach this endeavour, innovative technologies are considered e.g. AI-based smart control algorithms and digital twins creation. RENergetic integrates electricity, heat and waste vectors in three energy islands: New Docks in Ghent, Warta Campus in Poznan and San Raffaele Hospital and Research campus in Segrate-Milan. Beyond RENergetic, the impact of urban energy islands is ensured by considering technical, socio-economic and legal viability, while safe-guarding economic viability.

Role of Ghent University

UGent participates in RENergetic with in total 3 research teams belonging to 2 research groups: IDLab Techno-Economic Research team (lead: prof. Sofie Verbrugge) Role: Economic valuation of the needs for local stakeholders, evaluation and comparison of the different pilots from an economic perspective including a market analysis and business models identification, and the development of the replicability methodology. AI for Smart Grids team (lead: prof. Chris Develder) Role: Design and development of innovative control strategies and optimizers for specific energy vectors and a global optimizer taking multiple objectives over different energy vectors into account. Deployment and evaluation of the designed control strategies in the pilot New Docks in Ghent and support for replicability by designing the necessary interfaces for an easy deployment in other environments. The Centre for Environmental and Energy Law (lead: prof. Frederik Vandendriessche) Role: evaluate and compare the different pilots from a legal perspective and formulate recommendations for the replication of energy islands.