Assessment of future urban energy systems - Future energy efficient buildings and districts

Expanding growth of urban areas and their population affect the energy market drastically while sustainable supply of the energy demand is one the main global challenges of this century. Paradigm change in power generation and distribution is expected in this context in order to cope with the global challenges due to climate change, depletion of fossil fuel resources etc. Integrating more non-dispatchable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy can be considered as a promising direction which depends upon the availability. Furthermore, extending the energy storage facilities, connecting more flexible generation methods, strengthening the distribution networks such as electricity, heating, gas etc. are considered as promising methods where design and operation of urban energy system plays a major role. On the demand side, it is important to make the building stocks more energy efficient and integrate buildings into the energy network in an effective manner. Demand response strategies will play an important role in this context. Therefore, buildings will be strongly coupled with the energy systems where their interactions need to be carefully analysed when designing and operating energy systems for cities (e.g. energy smart cities).

This project focuses on optimum designing and assessment of energy systems in urban and neighbourhood scales. The novel concept of multi energy hub is used in this context. The potential of energy hubs to integrate higher fraction of renewable energy sources into the energy grid, role of energy storage and emerging energy technologies in energy hubs are some of the aspects that will be evaluated in this project. From the building perspective, the influence of building retrofitting on building energy efficiency and subsequently on energy system sizing will be evaluated. It is important to consider number of aspects when designing and operating energy systems. This project focuses on bridging all these aspects through multi-criterion assessment and decision making techniques where future investors and energy system operators can benefit.