We are exhausting our fossil fuels at an alarming rate. The costs of exploration and production are rising, which implies renewable alternatives are becoming more attractive. Add climate change, CO²-emissions and an increase in ecological awareness to the push towards sustainable solutions like sun, biomass, wind, water and geothermal energy. All these sources are available for an unlimited period of time without having a negative impact on the environment or our childrens’ future. And they free us from - often volatile - oil-producing countries.
Regarding the energy demand, an electrification of the use of energy is expected. Exciting new opportunities like fully electric cars will dramatically change the way we consume energy, while creating a positive impact on the environment.
Many people are worried about the transition to this new energy era. They fear an economic shock and a disruption of their lives. That is why our researchers are hard at work to develop new and innovative ways of producing, storing , trading and using energy.
“The transitions toward a new energy era, with its accompanying challenges and possibilities, will necessitate the integration and development of new technologies. At the same time, the energy markets will be in constant evolution and will not be the same as they are today. The production of electricity by renewables will be less predictable and more fluctuating. To make optimal use of these intermittent sources, the end user will be stimulated to match his energy use to their production. This will lead to changing tariff structures and incentives. Which in turn will lead to new and changing roles in the energy market. For example, there will be a new role for flexible consumers and the role of distributed producers could become of major importance”.
VITO’s research focuses on all topics related to the new networked energy system and the energy markets associated with it. Distributed energy sources will be installed locally, turning every building into a potential producer. This is a huge change compared to the current situation.
The challenge in this networked system is to keep supply and demand in balance at all times. After all, many renewable energy sources like wind and solar are variable, creating peaks at times and shortages at others. Demand can be flexible, but there are constraints like production processes that need to keep on running. A smart grid makes it possible to continuously maintain this balance between demand and supply and offer renewal energy at the lowest possible price – all without interrupting daily operations. The technology and the system architecture required for this, are developed at VITO.
The unique expertise at VITO and the state-of-the art laboratories are available for our partners – both in business and in research. Our experts cover all aspects on energy technology and smart grids. The different test facilities and labs are integrated into a “smart grids test infrastructure”.
The smart grid test infrastructure offers facilities to simulate a building, a neighbourhoud and even a district using a 150 kVA microgrid. The interconnected laboratories not only allow for simulation of the loads on the grid, both thermal and electrical, but also for their intelligent management and control. One of the labs is the thermo-technical lab.
"The thermo-technical lab is specialized in stationary and dynamic energy measurements. This can be done on all kinds of thermal systems, such as hot water boilers, heat pumps, solar collectors, thermal storage units and combinations of all these components. We can impose the same dynamic boundary conditions as the ones that are found in real life. Our unique control program can provide an endless number of heat demand scenarios to a set of heat-producing appliances like micro-CHPs and turbines.”
Batteries are crucial for our energy future – to store energy and for powering vehicles. The battery laboratory infrastructure is unique in Belgium, offering infrastructure to test batteries on their useful lifespan under varying conditions.
The expertise on hardware and components is complemented by knowledge on models and software for the integration of renewables in the grid. As the number of variable sources increases, the demands on the network grew exponentially and balancing can become very complex. In our “Homelab” the developed control algoritms are being tested on clusters of household devices.
VITO developed Intelligator®, a hard and software concept to optimally adjust demand based on supply at every single point in time – so called demand side integration. Combined with components like smart meters, these types of control systems can provide balancing during periods of high energy consumption.
“A smart grid is a complex system in which many components and many parties have to come together. Technology areas that were completely separate in the past, now have to collaborate: expertise from electrical engineering, thermodynamics and ICT is needed, to name just a few examples. VITO’s main strength is the combination of many of these skills. Our laboratories are interconnected, offering a test environment that is absolutely unique – we can directly look at the interaction between thermal and energetic energy while balancing both. This is crucial if we ever want a true smart grid.”
It is VITO’s mission to make this new world of energy come true. We believe very strongly in the smart grids and smart systems as a crucial component of a more sustainable society. Help us make this vision of our future come true.
