MEU – A cartographic-based web-platform for urban energy management and planning

This paper presents MEU (http://meu.epfl.ch) project results: a new GIS-centric web application for energy management and planning of existing or new urban zones. The project has been carried out with the collaboration of four Western Switzerland cities and three energy utilities companies using a “bottom-up” approach. The methodology involves the set-up of a dedicated geodatabase model aimed at structuring all energy-related knowledge of a city. Computation solvers could then be used to design and evaluate future energy scenarios. The ArcGIS Server-based web services are readily usable for cities in terms of data import, management, computation and display. The clear geographical presentation of computation results – for example on buildings' footprints thematic maps - using GIS functionalities and analysis tools facilitates the communication with all stakeholders at the local scale (such as energy utilities, local administrations, local government and the public) and provides figures to guide energy policy and investments. A complementary project on the monitoring of energy flows at a broader territorial level is also presented

Smart cities : la métamorphose

Le concept de « villes intelligentes » est aujourd’hui largement répandu et utilisé, de même que celui de « réseaux intelligents ». Or, dans les villes européennes et suisses, nous sommes pour l’instant dans une situation très éloignée par rapport à ces objectifs de « smart cities », non seulement du point de vue technologique mais aussi, peut-être surtout, du point de vue de leur intégration dans les politiques locales et dans les modèles d’affaires des entreprises énergétiques. En effet, s’il existe sur le marché des compteurs énergétiques permettant de communiquer, ils ne sont installés qu’en très petit nombre dans les villes et, dans la grande majorité des cas, sous-utilisés du point de vue des informations détaillées qu’ils pourraient fournir quant à la dynamique de l’approvisionnement et de la demande énergétiques. D’autre part, les implémentations actuelles de réseaux intelligents considèrent les consommateurs finaux comme des éléments « réactifs », pour utiliser une analogie électrique, et non comme des éléments « actifs », qui disposent de véritables outils afin de participer à la dynamique des réseaux, tant du point de vue de la demande énergétique (shift de consommations, installation de nouveaux appareils moins énergivores, rénovations de bâtiments, etc.) que de l’approvisionnement décentralisé. De même, les utilisateurs peuvent devenir co-créateurs de nouveaux services énergétiques, dans un marché dynamique et novateur. Couplés à des outils de planification énergétique territoriale toujours plus performants, ces nouveaux développements permettront aux villes européennes d’atteindre leurs ambitieux objectifs en matière d’efficacité énergétique accrue

Evolution of and additional functionalities to the city energy planning platform MEU

The MEU GIS-enabled web-platform has been developed in close collaboration with four Swiss cities: it enables detailed monitoring and planning for both energy demand and supply at individual building and neighborhood level (http://meu.epfl.ch). Whereas the first version of the MEU platform allowed launching calculations for only up to several hundreds of buildings at a time, the refactored version presently gives access to entire cities comprising several thousands of buildings with the same level of detail. On one hand, the code architecture has been thoroughly revised and consolidated while, on the other hand, the databases for the four partner cities are being completed, checked, corrected and eventually made completely available for several years. A large test campaign is thus underway on the refactored version of the MEU platform. In the upcoming months, the latter will present all the functionalities of the prototype version, i.e. include the construction and evaluation of complex energy scenarios. New functionalities are concomitantly being added to the MEU platform, in particular at the level of the energy networks. Indeed, in the prototype version, the latter were only displayed but no network attributes (except geo-referencing) were neither introduced nor used in calculations. The envisioned new functionalities will enable to start filling this important usability gap by adding network detailed attributes to the database structure and by allowing pre-dimensioning calculations based on selected energy scenarios and including the networks characteristics (available power, temperatures/pressures, limiting dimensions, aso.). The energy supply side aspects will thus be quantitatively be taken into account, along with the implications in terms of network extension/densification precisely determined. The natural gas network, which is – and shall continue to be - broadly present in all four partner cities, representing up to 30 % of the overall final territorial energy consumption, will be used as the first test case, in close collaboration with local multi-energy utilities

Action and influence of the multiple decision levels over the whole energy chain

This study concentrates on determining how to implement the legal framework at different institutional levels in an integrated approach for the planning and management of energy systems in urban areas. There are mainly five levels of decision able to influence the performances of urban zone in a Swiss city, namely the international, national, cantonal, municipal and individual levels. The objective of this study is to develop an evaluation grid, which will be used to identify the influence of each decision level over the different energy chain levels (primary, intermediate, final, useful energy and energy services). The results showed that beyond the constraints imposed by national and cantonal laws, ambitious energy-climate policies adopted by each level of governance certainly offer a lot of opportunities for the sustainable and energy-efficient development of urban areas. New regulations and associated instruments give to local decision-makers a set of arguments that can be used in a complementary way