General Description

The Thor science and business park is developed at the former mine site of Waterschei in the Flemish city of Genk.

Genk is a Flemish city located in the centre of the province of Limburg. The city of Genk represents an urbanized area that covers 30 distinct districts and houses 65.442 inhabitants (data of 01.01.2015, FOD economie, Directie statistiek). It historically developed around the three former coal mining sites of Winterslag, Waterschei and Zwartberg. The Thor science and business park (http://www.thorpark.be/en) is developed at the former mine site of Waterschei.

Linear1 is a Flemish Smart Grid project focusing on solutions to match residential electricity consumption with available wind and solar energy, an approach referred to as demand response. A field test was performed with 240 participating households, mostly dispersed and in some cases concentrated around particular neighbourhoods.

General Characteristics

Buildings

The field test included 240 residential dwellings. The multi-energy network developed at the Thor site is envisioned to connect the following buildings:

• IncubaThor: service building for e.g. start-up businesses, offering temporary business space (operational)
• EnergyVille I & II: office space and laboratories for the EnergyVille parters (VITO, KU Leuven, Imec) (operational and under construction)
• MoThor: business park for innovative service and small-scale production companies (construction not yet started)
• Main building (‘Thor Central’): service building including catering, lecture halls, conference space, child care etc. (renovation almost completed)
• T2-campus: education building hosting a university college for diverse technological education programs for different age groups and levels (construction not yet started)

Electrical Layout

• Centralized

  • Production
    N/A
  • Storage
    N/A

• Network

  Low-voltage grid

• Decentralized

  • Production
    The roofs of buildings EV1 and 2 are maximally covered with PV panels.
    80 PV installations
  • Storage
    N/A
    (The batteries in the battery-lab may theoretically be used for storage as part of the living lab, but this option is currently not foreseen)
  • Consumption
    All households have their particular load profiles, which were logged. The following appliances were included in the field test and could be operated in a flexible manner (see Figure 5):
    • > 400 smart white goods (dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers)
    • 20 heat pumps
    • 15 hot water buffers
    • 6 EVs
    Figure 5: Overview of the technical set-up of the field test

Heating Layout

Cooling Layout

ICT Layout

Energy flows are to be controlled via a central system offering RealTime + Historic data and interfaces for appliances, models and algorithms.

A scalable, reliable and interoperable ICT architecture was designed, implemented and deployed. In each Linear household we installed a home gateway (see Figure 2), i.e. the core local component of our system. This gateway communicated with the measurement devices and smart appliances and sent all collected data in real-time to the backend of the gateway provider. The data was then forwarded to the Linear pilot backend.

The backend integrated multiple gateway providers and supported multiple clusters per provider, with different business/control cases running for the various clusters. The pilot backend also received all control set points for the Balancing Responsible Party and Distribution System Operator control cases, for example wind imbalance set points, variable prices, real-time transformer measurements, etc. Based on this, and on the status data received from the households, the control logic generated appliance control signals which were sent via the pilot backend and gateway provider backend to the home gateways of the end users, and from there to the smart appliances.

Social Aspects

• Users

  The multi-energy network developed at the Thor site is envisioned to connect the following buildings:
  • IncubaThor: service building for e.g. start-up businesses, offering temporary business space (operational)
  • EnergyVille I & II: office space and laboratories for the EnergyVille parters (VITO, KU Leuven, Imec) (operational and under construction)
  • MoThor: business park for innovative service and small-scale production companies (construction not yet started)
  • Main building (‘Thor Central’): service building including catering, lecture halls, conference space, child care etc. (renovation almost completed)
  • T2-campus: education building hosting a university college for diverse technological education programs for different age groups and levels (construction not yet started)
  The facility managers and / or the businesses and institutions working from those buildings are considered the main users.

• Socio-demographics (for residential areas)

  The socio-economic profile of the city of Genk is rather atypical in Flanders. Due its mining history, the city is culturally diverse as a result of strong immigration in the past (54% of the inhabitants have immigration backgrounds). Genk houses predominantly working-class families with a rather exceptional age specific distribution: Genk has the highest number of under 20 year olds in Flanders and the lowest percentage of seniors of 60+ (Gieraerts 2014). What is more, 60% of the age group 12-18 are judged to be economically and socially disadvantaged (Gieraerts 2014).
  [Specifics for the direct surroundings of the Thor park could be listed here.]

• Dominant views and attitudes towards smart energy technology

  The Linear project has shown that the basic attitude of people in Flanders towards smart energy technologies is rather positive with 36% of the population being labelled ‘advocates’. [Specific assessments for the City of Genk, for the direct surroundings of the Thor park, or for users at the Thor park could be listed here.]

• Other

  [Any other relevant social characteristics of the context may be listed here]

Technological Aspects

• Renewable energy mix in the context of the SC (e.g. national or regional scale)

  • The Flemish energy mix is currently characterized by high shares of petroleum products, gas and nuclear energy, with a small but growing share of renewables.
  • The share of renewable energy is some 6% of final energy use, or 13% of electricity use, 5% of heating and cooling usage, and 4% of transport usage.
  • Renewable electricity is generated mainly from biomass, PV and wind, with minor contributions from biogas and waste.
  • A nuclear phase out is planned by 2025, although still politically debated.
  • Heating networks only exist at a small scale.

• Other

Environmental Aspects

• Local availability of energy sources

  • The potential of geothermal plants in the area of Genk is currently being assessed.
  • Local wind production is not possible due to the nearby airfield.

• Climate conditions

  Climate conditions are conform the temperate western European climate. [Any relevant local specifics can be added here if applicable, e.g. strong coastal wind]

• Other

  [Any other relevant environmental characteristics of the context may be listed here]

Economic Aspects

• Market players

  There are several players active on the ‘unbundled’ and liberalised energy market in Flanders and Belgium, each with different roles and responsibilities. The main ones are:
  • Various electricity producers and energy retailers.
  • The transmission grid operators Elia (for electricity) and Fluxis (for gas).
  • The distribution grid operators Eandis and Infrax
  • The Flemish regulator (VREG) that monitors and regulates the energy market.
  • The Access (or ‘Balance’) Responsible Parties allocated to each grid access point.
  Also new players are entering the market - Aggregators, ESCOs, and ICT companies - responding to the opportunities of renewable energy integration, flexible energy use and smart grid.
  [It is sufficient here to list the market players that are of main relevance to the associated SC].

• Energy tariffs (electricity, gas, heat)

  Current electricity rates are a static (single or day-night) rate. A relatively minor share covers real energy cost (~32%), with other shares covering distribution costs, energy policy costs (e.g. green electricity certificates), and taxes.
  Average rates are around 0,25 EU/kWh for electricity and 0,05 EU/kWh for gas.

• Market regulation and metering

  • The smart meter roll-out has only very recently been set in motion. With mostly conventional electricity metering, injecting PV power back into the grid is effectively done at the same price at taking electricity from the grid (‘running back meter’). Under current regulation, energy storage is thus not an attractive business case for residential users.
  • Current market regulations don’t allow the remuneration of flexible energy use (e.g. via dynamic pricing). The recent EU proposal ‘Clean Energy for All Europeans’1 (the ‘winter package’) does provides guidelines in that direction, and it can be expected that regulation will be modified over the course of the coming years.

• Other

  [Any other relevant economical characteristics of the context may be listed here]

Political Aspects

• Main policy vision

  Belgium, like most EU countries, is committed to achieving the 2020 and 2030 EU energy targets. To accelerate the development of renewables, recently an ‘energy pact’2 was launched covering topics of energy efficiency, renewable energy (in particular solar, wind, and renewable heat), flexibility, finance and governance. Amongst others, the intention is to develop a policy framework for storage and to improve regulation to optimize the usage of the distribution grid.

• Incentives for renewable energy and storage

  A main financial policy incentive for renewable energy have been the green electricity certificates for renewable electricity generation. For energy storage, no financial incentives are currently foreseen.

• Regulation free zones

  A regulation free zone was recently granted for the Thor park (EnergyVille premise) in Genk.

• Other

  [Any other relevant political characteristics of the context may be listed here]