Sustain2

 

Sustain2 is the second phase of the project Sustain, focused on robust optimization of district energy systems and the development of a city-district energy management system, as well as the development of a cloud demonstration platform for storing and visualizing large amounts of energy and building data. Sustain2 aims to validate the cloud platform and city-district energy management systems developed in phase one on the field. It is implemented in Bottrop, where administrative buildings are equipped with sensors in order to collect and analyze the data in the cloud, and trigger energy saving measures.

While Sustain1 relied only on simulation models of real buildings and synthetic user behaviors, in Sustain2 real-time measurements of 25 buildings located in the city of Bottrop are processed and evaluated in a large-scale field test in order to take energy saving and efficiency actions. To strengthen the significance of the field test, the project partners, RWTH Aachen, City of Bottrop, ELE and E.ON, will implement three different energy monitoring systems, with different hardware and software components. These systems will collect the measurements in a decentralized, independent manner in the individual buildings and then will send them to their own cloud platforms. In addition, interfaces will be deployed between the existing Sustain2 cloud platform and the respective clouds, so that all data for the community is available in the Sustain2 cloud and can be accessed by the users at a user interface and can be used and visualized on displays on-site. For example, the energy consumption and the saved energy can be visualized on a display at the entrance of the museum, where visitors can get informed about the corresponding energy efficiency measures.

The project will also develop two energy management concepts. First, a concept, based on human-machine interaction with close involvement of the user, where the findings of the data analysis are communicated to the users or to a facility manager in order to fix problems and improve efficiency. Second, an automated energy management concept will be developed based on optimization and the integration of data analytical tools. Therefore, the concept will be tested on digital twins of the original buildings with virtual controllable heating devices, in order to test the performance of the algorithm and evaluate the energy saving potential for modern heating devices enabling active control.

The broad field test in Sustain phase 2 enables the testing of both energy management methods and energy savings through human-machine interaction in real buildings. The cloud platform provided by Sustain2 is designed to be sustainable and scalable in order to be able to be transferred to other cities and municipalities.

 

We are grateful for the financial support of the BMWi (Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy), funding number 03ET1629A.