News

Community energy systems are a promising solution for achieving European energy and climate goals

February 27, 2023 No Comments

Stakeholder engagement as one of the key issues for sustainability of energy communities

December 20, 2022 No Comments

CREATORS offers free pre-feasibility study for community energy systems – the future of on-site energy management – applications close 9th December

November 29, 2022 No Comments

Community energy systems need informed investors to become a solution for Europe

October 10, 2022 No Comments

How do digital twins accelerate the energy transition and creation of community energy systems?

July 15, 2022 No Comments

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 957815.

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Jesenice in Slovenia

Jesenice is located in the west part of Slovenia. The Jesenice CREATORS’ energy community is built upon collaboration between local consumers, public entities, the local DSO and a large industrial site SIJ Acroni. SIJ Acroni steel plant, one of the largest energy consumers in Slovenia, has a large industrial battery of 12.6 MW (22.2 MWh), 5MW of rooftop PV is planned, plus a small facility for hydrogen production from excesses of renewable energy sources (RES) electricity in the Slovenian Power System. ACRONI has plans to utilize approximately 25 MW of low-grade waste heat and feed it to the district heating networks of the nearby towns of Koroška Bela and Jesenice (15,000 inhabitants). The District Heating Network operator estimates a potential reduction of their natural gas consumption by 50-75% with the implementation of this waste heat recovery solution.

This pilot case is aimed at (i) integrating and coordinating the traditionally decoupled energy sectors (electricity, heat, gas) at various levels (supply, demand, storage) by leveraging on the available thermal and electrical storage units and (ii) maximizing the profit of each stakeholder.

The pilot at Jesenice consists mainly of the SIJ Acroni steel plant and more than a thousand households. Company SIJ Acroni is a member of steel division of SLOVENIAN STEEL GROUP (SIJ) and is a producer of flat rolled steel products using modern recycling techniques, where steel production is based on the reuse of secondary raw materials. SIJ Group’s is planning its activities taking into account the targets of the European Green Deal and the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), which the Republic of Slovenia adopted in 2020. Although the production process generates carbon emission, SIJ Acroni operates according to the principles of circular economy and plans to make decarbonisation a strategic priority, to work on enhancing environmental practices and energy efficiency and reduce the non-renewable energy sources in all parts of the production process. The biggest potential is to use the excess heat from its production process to reuse it within the process itself in the form of hot water and steam, and to feed the surplus in the district heating network for the nearby municipality of Jesenice. As a big electricity consumer, SIJ Acroni has plans to produce renewable energy for self-consumption coming from solar PV and potentially hydroelectric energy and is also studying possible ways to use its infrastructure to produce green hydrogen. With a large rooftop for a PV installation, SIJ Acroni has potential to promote new business models for community funding, encouraging citizens to participate and create an energy community. Different local stakeholders, both private and public entities, are supporting this project since they consider this project beneficial to the villages nearby and ensures the sustainability of the business.

Temse in Belgium

The Temse “De Zaat” community energy system is located in East Flanders, Belgium. The community consists of a business park, medium size industrial facilities and residential buildings. The ambition is to create an energy community incorporating new technology and business models. The yearly consumption of the community was 2.797 MWh in 2019, and will further increase. The site combines variety of generation and storage assets such as rooftop and floating PV, Hydrogen, battery storage, hydropower, V2G and pumped hydro.

The goal of the ‘De Zaat’ will be the creation of an energy community where individual existing and new technologies are interconnected into a multi-vector future-proofed market optimising local demand-generation as well as distribution network congestion. Interaction with home-owners will demonstrate energy bill savings and the business case for a mixed ownership model for renewable energy installations. The Temse CES will demonstrate the patented “energy hill”; a pumped hydro installation and a zero-energy pump will be integrated: 1) to balance the grid (FCR) and 2) as innovative way to generate energy. Hydrogen (H2) will be also used to store and regenerate energy with a fuel cell as well as to providing services to the grid such as FCR. The H2 installation will be used also to compress H2 and use this as fuel for the heavy-duty transportation.

This pilot was promoted by the Construction Company Cordeel and aims to include both industrial and residential buildings in the area. Initially it is composed of multiple buildings operated by Cordeel including Cordeel’s headquarters, production facilities, a woodshop and a supply unit among other buildings, and potentially will include other industrial facilities in the business park and nearby residential buildings. The pilot combines different generation and storage assets installed in Cordeel’s buildings that allow to have a 70% of self-consumption rate, including solar PV installations, battery storage, EV charging points and other assets in the planning phase such as tidal energy for production and storage. Involving industrial and residential consumers with different load profiles shows potential to increase the utilization of renewable energy on-site and bring environmental benefits. Cordeel, as one of the largest construction companies in Belgium, aims to be involved in the whole process of setting up energy communities, from the construction of the buildings to the installation, operation and maintenance of the energy infrastructures and the energy community.

Tartu in Estonia

The city of Tartu, located in southeast Estonia, is the “EC Smart Cities programme lighthouse city”. The pilot at Tartu site will be the first solar energy community in Estonia and it will serve as a testbed of business models and different ownership models to replicate both within the Tartu city and in other municipalities.The energy community, promoted by the City Government and Tartu Regional Energy Agency (TREA) will consist of several buildings and distributed energy sources. On the consumption side there is a public multifunctional building that hosts private entities (Anne public sauna, Tartu pesumaja laundry service and city social department office), a multi apartment building “Anne 51” from a housing cooperative and additionally there is a kindergarten that has the potential to be included. On the generation side there is a PV installation on top of the Multifunctional building owned by Tartu pesumaja that has excess energy that is sold back to the grid and it is planned to make a new PV installation on top of the multi apartment building. The idea is to encourage citizens from the multi apartment to jointly invest on the solar installation and to create an energy cooperative. Additionally there is an EV charging station used by the social department of social services that will also be a part of the energy community. Due to the difference and compatibility on the commercial and residential load profiles, the aim is to use CREATORS’ project to optimize and increase the usage of renewable energy while decreasing the air pollution and greenhouse gases emissions.

The complex will be connected with a commercial building and flexibility will be improved through V2G services and coupling with local waste heat network where possible. The core aim of Tartu city within the project is to explore ways to engage with individual homeowners and homeowner associations and finding equitable ways to share communal renewable energy installations and incentivising homeowners and local businesses to jointly invest in renewable energy capacity in eastern Europe. 1,3MWp are planned to be installed on public buildings of which 100kWp is in the CREATORS’ community energy system (CES) neighbourhood. The Tartu community will establish a local community market of renewable energy for the use of local SMEs and citizens.

As the first solar energy community in Estonia, Tartu will explore new ownership and contracting models that will govern the local system. CREATORS energy management platform, that will be adapted to the Estonian ESTFEED data platform (TSO), will unlock the business model for communal investment in PV capacity for MFH and explore benefits of sector coupling with the residential sector, thus reaching higher energy efficiency and increased share of renewables.

News

Community energy systems are a promising solution for achieving European energy and climate goals

Stakeholder engagement as one of the key issues for sustainability of energy communities

CREATORS offers free pre-feasibility study for community energy systems – the future of on-site energy management – applications close 9th December

Community energy systems need informed investors to become a solution for Europe

How do digital twins accelerate the energy transition and creation of community energy systems?

Burgos, Spain

Sainte Rose, Guadalupe

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Kostinbrod, Bulgaria

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Barcelona in Spain

Jesenice in Slovenia

Temse in Belgium

Tartu in Estonia

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