Designing a local energy communityHauts-Sarts

Abstract

Microgrids are complete but small electrical systems. They consist of generation, consumption and storage devices that can be optimized jointly in order to satisfy some goals such as feeding the demand with maximum reliability and power quality and maximizing the renewable energy harvested locally. They can either be grid-tied or off-grid.

A local energy community is a microgrid collecting lots of legal entities, such as companies in a business park. The purpose of a local energy community is to share electricity generation and storage resources in a neighborhood in order to maximize collective self-consumption, among other objectives.

In the context of this work, the case of the Hauts-Sarts business park close to Liège will be analyzed, studied and investigated in details.

First, a detailed description of the microgrid components will be presented. Then, a particular attention will be paid to the different companies studied and different sizings of capacity of renewable energy sources (RES) will be run based on a software already developed in the team adapted to the needs required by this master's thesis.

Afterwards, thermal aspect will be considered. A heat demand estimation model will therefore have to be made for each company in order to see the interest of cogeneration.

Finally, the final sizings of all the companies in community mode will be carried out with and without cogeneration in order to see the interest of cogeneration and an elaborated control system. Consideration will also be given to the control strategy developed for sizing with cogeneration.