Évora

In Évora, energy saving solutions will be implemented, increasing local penetration of renewable energy through solutions that respect the city’s architectural façade. Furthermore, this area has a vast potential in terms of PV generation and the variety of previous projects that already have already endowed Évora with an advanced smart grid, awarding the city with the first Iberian Smart Grid City title.

Some of the Innovative Elements that will be used in Évora:

• PV glass; PV canopy; PV in skylights, PV roofs and PV shingle, will be used following building codes and architectural designs, making it suitable for historical areas.
• For optimally managing of the energy flux, it will be installed: bidirectional smart inverters, power electronics energy router, advanced building management systems, and home/building energy management system.

Deployment of Positive Energy Districts by reducing energy consumption and increasing renewable consumption, sustained by advanced ICT solutions that will foster flexibility enablement and efficient energy flows between buildings and the distribution network. Using grid-connected energy storage solutions will also contribute to the selected sites’ positive performance.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Smart Distribution Management System to enhance grid monitoring and control schemes.
• P2P energy trading platform, as a cornerstone transactive layer, allows the operation of a local market between buildings, also rewarding citizens’ sustainable actions.

POCITYF aims to demonstrate and replicate success stories for waste stream (heat and material) utilization, originating from different sources, as an alternative highly efficient pathway for satisfying energy needs and reducing waste, in line with EU policies regarding the promotion of industrial symbiosis and circular economy.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Pay-As-You-Throw systems for waste production;
• 2nd life residential batteries. These systems reuse the battery modules of EVs, enhancing the circular economy of this deployment.

The generation of energy will change drastically towards decentralized generation mostly in residential areas and at the block/district level, since the energy produced by RES will be injected into the micro-grids. POCITYF will demonstrate innovative storage and grid flexibility effectively manage the core issues of interdependent energy sub-networks and sub-systems of sustainable district/city smart grid environments.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Platform and algorithm that control the provisioning of flexibility and market services;
• 2nd life residential batteries;
• P2P energy trading platform.

In the commercial park, the freezers thermal inertia is used to achieve monthly energy savings. During POCITYF, the timely management responsible for the performance of this method will be optimized, by being automated and added, as a module, to Schneider BMS equipment that will be installed therein. On the other hand, in Évora city centre, municipal buildings will target market-oriented flexibility services to improve their self-sufficiency, which can be used as an ancillary services market product or for the DSO.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Freezing storage in store, an innovative and simple solution that takes advantage of the natural storage capacities of freezers;
• Market-oriented building flexibility services, allowing retailers/aggregators to handle buildings’ thermal flexibility.

POCITYF aims to demonstrate and perform replication studies for the idea of V2G and smart solar power-driven charging stations to support the demand-supply energy management (with a scheme of smart charging management) at the district level, while increasing their large-scale energy storage capacity and promotion of more environmentally friendly mobility solutions. From the citizen perspective, this solution addresses e-mobility aspects as well.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Energy management platform for the control of EVs charging;
• Bidirectional smart inverters for EV smart charging and V2G applications to allow the smart charging of EV to afterwards contribute towards the reduction of peak consumption;
• Smart lamp posts, with EV charging and 5G functionalities.

Évora will be a learner of the EV sharing scheme introduced by Alkmaar and will be demonstrated within the city centre. Given the current problems that Évora faces in terms of traffic and parking in the historical area of the city, this solution is expected to reduce the congestion of private and municipal-owned cars for short-distance urban provision of services via EV sharing mechanisms with Évora municipality-owned EVs.

The energy transition to positive buildings, districts and communities shall be pursued through a close relationship with citizens. The transition path should encompass a bottom-up approach in which co-creation, co-development and co-implementation processes play a central role, aiming to prevent the disconnection that, may arise from the deployment of non-tailored solutions, agnostic to the culture and history of the local citizens. These innovative social engagement strategies will be designed to boost and motivate the citizens to participate and create solutions along with the industry and policymakers.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Digital transformation in social innovation enables private entities to create fundraising campaigns to alleviate energy poverty with green projects’ implementation, making use of a P2P trading platform;
• Gamification platform to be used for fostering the interaction with energy users in the different types of buildings at the different energy blocks, creating tailored strategies for disseminating information, promoting challenges and competition based on communities to leverage the impact on energy reduction strategies without compromising comfort levels.

Évora municipality will learn with Alkmaar municipality, via training sessions, the specific features of the TIPPING approach. It will replicate its implementation in the city, establishing a link up to region-level. Évora will reorient the learnings of this method to tackle the legal restrictions that come with the UNESCO World Heritage Site classification, matching a policy-based technique with the best practices that will emerge from POCITYF outcomes.

This solution covers not only the monitoring needs of the demonstration areas at the building and district levels, but also paves the way for the transition to an interconnected ecosystem underpinning the effectiveness of the remaining transition tracks, while enabling the conception of new solutions on top of the data that will be retrieved and centralized at a city-level platform.

Some Innovative Elements that are intended to be used in this solution are:

• Extension of City Information Platform (CIP), which offers municipalities a holistic view of their cities, presenting effective insights based on the cross-domain data from different fields (traffic, air quality, waste collection, among others).