Key takeaways from the project underscore the importance of fostering long-term collaborations between technical experts, communities, and institutional partners. By integrating technical innovation with human-centred design, the SUSTENANCE project has not only advanced renewable energy adoption but also established a framework for empowering communities to actively participate in sustainable energy transitions. Moving forward, the lessons learned, and solutions developed provide a solid foundation for addressing future challenges in energy system decarbonization and resilience.
MULTIFILE
The increasing share of renewable production like wind and PV poses new challenges to our energy system. The intermittent behavior and lack of controllability on these sources requires flexibility measures like storage and conversion. Production, consumption, transportation, storage and conversion systems become more intertwined. The increasing complexity of the system requires new control strategies to fulfill existing requirements.The SynergyS project addresses the main question how to operate increasingly complex energy systems in a controllable, robust, safe, affordable, and reliable way. Goal of the project is to develop and test a smart control system for a multi-commodity energy system (MCES), with electricity, hydrogen and heat. In scope are an industrial cluster (Chemistry Park Delfzijl) and a residential cluster (Leeuwarden) and their mutual interaction. Results are experimentally tested in two real-life demo-sites scale models: Centre of Expertise Energy (EnTranCe) and The Green Village (TU Delft) represent respectively the industrial and residential cluster.The result will be a market-driven control system to operate a multi-commodity energy system, integrating the industrial and residential cluster. The experimental setup is a combination of physical demo-site assets complemented with (digital) asset models. Experimental validation is based on a demo-scenario including real time data, simulated data and several stress tests.In this session we’ll elaborate more on the project and present (preliminary) results on the testing criteria, scenarios and experimental setup.
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The future energy system could benefit from the integration of the independent gas, heat and electricity infrastructures. In addition to an increase in exergy efficiency, such a Hybrid Energy Network (HEN) could support the increase of intermittent renewable energy sources by offering increased operational flexibility. Nowadays, the expectations on Natural Gas resources forecast an increase in the application of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), as a means of storage and transportation, which has a high exergy value due to the low temperature. Therefore, we analysed the integration of a decentralized LNG regasification with a CHP (Waste-to-Energy) plant, to determine whether the integration could offer additional operational flexibility for the future energy network with intermittent renewable energy sources, under optimized exergy efficient conditions. We compared the independent system with two systems integrated by means of 1) Organic Rankine Cycle and 2) Stirling Engine using the cold of the LNG, that we analysed using a simplified deterministic model based on the energy hub concept. We use the hourly measured electricity and heat demand patterns for 200 households with 35% of the households producing electricity from PV according to a typical measured solar insolation pattern in The Netherlands. We found that for both systems the decentralized LNG regasification integrated with the W2E plant affects the imbalance of the system for electricity and heat, due to the additional redundant paths to produced electricity. The integration of the systems offers additional operational flexibility depending on the means of integration and its availability to produce additional energy carriers. For our future work, we will extend the model, taking into account the variability and randomness in the different parameters, which may cause significant changes in the performance and reliability of the model.
The specific objective of HyScaling is to achieve a 25-30% cost reduction for levelized cost of hydrogen. This cost reduction will be achieved in 2030 when the HyScaling innovations have been fully implemented. HyScaling develops novel hardware (such as stacks & cell components), low-cost manufacturing processes, optimized integrated system designs and advanced operating and control strategies. In addition to the goal of accelerating implementation of hydrogen to decarbonize energy-intensive industry, HyScaling is built around industrial partners who are aiming to build a business on the HyScaling innovations. These include novel components for electrolysers (from catalysts to membranes, from electrode architectures to novel coatings) as well as electrolyser stacks and systems for different applications. For some innovations (e.g. a coating from IonBond, an electrode design from Veco) the consortium aims at starting commercialisation before the end of the program. A unique characteristic of the HyScaling program is the orientation on Use Cases. In addition to partners representing the Dutch manufacturing industry, end-users and technology providers are partner in the consortium. This enables the consortium to develop the electrolyser technology specifically for different applications. In order to be able to come to an assessment of the market for electrolysers and components, the use cases also include decentralized energy systems.Projectpartners:Nouryon, Tejin, Danieli Corus, VDL, Hauzer, VECO, lonbond, Fluor, Frames, Magneto, VONK, Borit, Delft IMP, ZEF, MTSA, SALD, Dotx control, Hydron Energy, MX, Polymers, VSL, Fraunhofer IPT, TNO, TU Delft, TU Eindhoven, ISPT, FMC.
The integration of renewable energy resources, controllable devices and energy storage into electricity distribution grids requires Decentralized Energy Management to ensure a stable distribution process. This demands the full integration of information and communication technology into the control of distribution grids. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is used to communicate measurements and commands between individual components and the control server. In the future this control is especially needed at medium voltage and probably also at the low voltage. This leads to an increased connectivity and thereby makes the system more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. According to the research agenda NCSRA III, the energy domain is becoming a prime target for cyber-attacks, e.g., abusing control protocol vulnerabilities. Detection of such attacks in SCADA networks is challenging when only relying on existing network Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs). Although these systems were designed specifically for SCADA, they do not necessarily detect malicious control commands sent in legitimate format. However, analyzing each command in the context of the physical system has the potential to reveal certain inconsistencies. We propose to use dedicated intrusion detection mechanisms, which are fundamentally different from existing techniques used in the Internet. Up to now distribution grids are monitored and controlled centrally, whereby measurements are taken at field stations and send to the control room, which then issues commands back to actuators. In future smart grids, communication with and remote control of field stations is required. Attackers, who gain access to the corresponding communication links to substations can intercept and even exchange commands, which would not be detected by central security mechanisms. We argue that centralized SCADA systems should be enhanced by a distributed intrusion-detection approach to meet the new security challenges. Recently, as a first step a process-aware monitoring approach has been proposed as an additional layer that can be applied directly at Remote Terminal Units (RTUs). However, this allows purely local consistency checks. Instead, we propose a distributed and integrated approach for process-aware monitoring, which includes knowledge about the grid topology and measurements from neighboring RTUs to detect malicious incoming commands. The proposed approach requires a near real-time model of the relevant physical process, direct and secure communication between adjacent RTUs, and synchronized sensor measurements in trustable real-time, labeled with accurate global time-stamps. We investigate, to which extend the grid topology can be integrated into the IDS, while maintaining near real-time performance. Based on topology information and efficient solving of power flow equation we aim to detect e.g. non-consistent voltage drops or the occurrence of over/under-voltage and -current. By this, centrally requested switching commands and transformer tap change commands can be checked on consistency and safety based on the current state of the physical system. The developed concepts are not only relevant to increase the security of the distribution grids but are also crucial to deal with future developments like e.g. the safe integration of microgrids in the distribution networks or the operation of decentralized heat or biogas networks.
A fast growing percentage (currently 75% ) of the EU population lives in urban areas, using 70% of available energy resources. In the global competition for talent, growth and investments, quality of city life and the attractiveness of cities as environments for learning, innovation, doing business and job creation, are now the key parameters for success. Therefore cities need to provide solutions to significantly increase their overall energy and resource efficiency through actions addressing the building stock, energy systems, mobility, and air quality.The European Energy Union of 2015 aims to ensure secure, affordable and climate-friendly energy for EU citizens and businesses among others, by bringing new technologies and renewed infrastructure to cut household bills, create jobs and boost growth, for achieving a sustainable, low carbon and environmentally friendly economy, putting Europe at the forefront of renewable energy production and winning the fight against global warming.However, the retail market is not functioning properly. Many household consumers have too little choices of energy suppliers and too little control over their energy costs. An unacceptably high percentage of European households cannot afford to pay their energy bills. Energy infrastructure is ageing and is not adjusted to the increased production from renewables. As a consequence there is still a need to attract investments, with the current market design and national policies not setting the right incentives and providing insufficient predictability for potential investors. With an increasing share of renewable energy sources in the coming decades, the generation of electricity/energy will change drastically from present-day centralized production by gigawatt fossil-fueled plants towards decentralized generation, in cities mostly by local household and district level RES (e.g PV, wind turbines) systems operating in the level of micro-grids. With the intermittent nature of renewable energy, grid stress is a challenge. Therefore there is a need for more flexibility in the energy system. Technology can be of great help in linking resource efficiency and flexibility in energy supply and demand with innovative, inclusive and more efficient services for citizens and businesses. To realize the European targets for further growth of renewable energy in the energy market, and to exploit both on a European and global level the expected technological opportunities in a sustainable manner, city planners, administrators, universities, entrepreneurs, citizens, and all other relevant stakeholders, need to work together and be the key moving wheel of future EU cities development.Our SolutionIn the light of such a transiting environment, the need for strategies that help cities to smartly integrate technological solutions becomes more and more apparent. Given this condition and the fact that cities can act as large-scale demonstrators of integrated solutions, and want to contribute to the socially inclusive energy and mobility transition, IRIS offers an excellent opportunity to demonstrate and replicate the cities’ great potential. For more information see the HKU Smart Citieswebsite or check out the EU-website.
