You thought it would never happen, but you´re watching it happen. Your world upsidedown at an unexpected speed. Ecologists announced a different world according to their believes, but it turns out that in the end it will be the cold sceptics of the Excel sheet who will do it. Ukraine war has caused an energetic crisis, and we wil se if it won´t also be food, that it doesn´t only brings us high energy prices, but also could cause shortage of gas, petroleum and offshots.
We are seeing that in order to resolve this situation it is being proposed to tap into Europe´s subsoil resources, especially shale gas, and to increase generation capcity based on nuclear fission. All these measures could serve to alleviate the energy crisis, although it does not seem at this stage to be willing to disengage from greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. So it is likely that we will not see much hydraulic breakup, we will probably see more nuclear reactors and, above all, we may see a strengthening of the energy efficiency and renewable generation policies that the European Union has been promoting for some time. And it will not be for environmental reasons, but simply to maintain an economic system that does not take us back to the 18th century.
The sun and its child, the wind, will increase their weight in the electric system faster than expected if access to the raw materials needed to manufacture generators is not interrupted. The stoarge of energy could be developed with intensity and we end up getting acquainted with hydrogen as we have made in the past with butane. But surely what we have the hardest time getting usd to would be the new figures that will appear in the energy system management.
The energy communities are one of the news that are getting shape in Spain. Although still aren´t frequent, there are several examples of people that joint to generate and manage the energy they consume. The downgrading of the photovoltaic panels favours their installation in domestic roofs, which achieves that generation and consumption are close. Energy management could be done from the cloud thansk to Internet of Things and specialized companies could offer this service to communities. Hydrogen and batteries seems to be called to be the energy storage medium, although it will depend on the cost and availability of raw materials. Internet of Things woul allow to manage demand flexibility inside the community. It seems to start being possible that a group more or less big of citizens constitute their own electricity generation company.
But for these participative companies, this capitalism at a human scale, could be possible, we have to defeat some obstacles. And leaving aside reluctance to change, the mosr important is the cost of setting up such a community. Are being made huge efforts to understand people motivations1 to get involved in an energy community and to design mechanisms to set them in motion2, but perhaps not as much effort is being put into designing the business models that would make them economically viable.
We can think of some business models for energy communities. The most clear is the save in energy purchase. If the community generates their own energy and distributes it betweent their members, they will save at least the trasnport tolls that are payed in a conventional bill. Other possible business would be the sale of energy surplus, but current legislation imposes limitations on the distance at which the buyer can be located. The demand flexibility could also give rise to another businees model based on promote a distribution grid of auxiliary services, but this is not easy. If this were to be attempted through balancing markets, the regulations impose minimum power values that will be difficult for many communities to achieve. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that it is not possible to interact with the network without complying with a whole series of complex technical rules. It becomes necessary the independent aggregator figure, which is already provided for in existing legislation, but which is not fully developed and which would have to intermediate between the community and the electricity grid. These problems could be solve if they existed energy local markets or flexibility markets, but in Spain are in an embryonic state and it will still take some time to see them in operation.
But, despite of these deficiencies, nowadays energetic crisis overview joint with the directives that came from the European Union will boost the development of energy communities. The problem will be finding resources to do so. Administrations and the cold sceptics of Excel spreadsheets who come up with innovative business models may have the last word.
It is common knowledge that the moon goes through phases depending on its relative position between the earth and the sun. Thanks to that nights can be a showcase for looking to the starry skies or the perfect environment so that lycanthropes can take on vampires.
In science there are also phases, and the phase shifting, relative to the state in which matter is found. However, changes in this case have to do with temperature and heat and not with the states of the moon.
State transitions, have an important advantage and is that they are produced at constant temperature, allowing the matter to acquire and give up heat without changing temperature and thus reducing the impact over the environment that surrounds them. Are changes that, unlike the transformation suffered by David Naughton in “American Men in London” (film that achieve an Oscar in 1981 to the best makeup), aren´ t visible, but they are perceived.
The application of phase change materials, in particular those that have inside the homes usual transition temperatures between 18ºC-25ºC, can be used as recoveries in walls with which can reach a bigger comfort by stabilising the inside radiant temperature. It´ s not rare to found homes that because of a bad insulation are like thermic vampires, they remove us the heat, increasing the energy bill.
Inside the SUDO-SUDOKET project, which objective is the development of Key Enabling Technologies (KET) applied to innovative buildings, phase change materials dissolved in mortars have been studied to check its effect over the inside comfort conditions, as well as the effect over the climatization consume.
The results of the project had led to conclusions such as that a better stabilization of inside temperatures are reached if the radiant temperature is improved and, moreover, a reduction in the consume of climatization equipment, reaching energy saving, working as if it were a ring of garlic tied around the neck of our air-conditioning system.
The same as our favourite satellite goes from new to full, the enclosures of our homes will evolve to a future with a better control in superficial temperature and evenmore with adaptative enclosures that change of phase depending on the outside conditions.
Acknowledgments
The work has been done inside SUDOKET – mapping, consolidation and dissemination of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) project for the construction sector at the SUDOE space, ref: SOE2/P1/E0677 that is co-financed by the Europeand Found of Regional Development (FEDER) through the INTERREG SUDOE programme.
Caves were our first home but, have we stopped to think about how our ancestors felt in the cold mornings of winter? And in hot summer days? We may be surprised…
Humanity had had multiple and different homes. From the tipis of the american indians to the skyscrapers that flood nowadays the city of New York. Currently, buildings represents 40% of the energy consume and 36% of the greenhouse effects. Much of them, moreover, are from the 70s. Definetly, we need a change if we want to mitigate the climate change.
In the Palaeolithic, the first dwellings, in the form of huts made of animal skins and logs, protected our ancestors from the cold and wind. During the Neolithic period, the construction of villages with adobe houses provided our ancient inhabitants with habitable conditions. And all this without consuming a single kilowatt hour and using the resources that nature offered them to obtain certain conditions of comfort.
If we look at the evolution of buildings throughout history, we can see that adobe houses gave way to the dwellings of ancient Egypt, which were made of straw and wood. Ancient Rome introduced concrete and stone, as well as technologies such as the round arch, the arcade, the vault and the doem. Leaping forward to the Renaissance, this era marked an architectural breakthrough, including materials such as marble, stucco and tiles. Until the evolution towards the brick that makes up the majority of existing buildings. But despite the evolution in the use of materials… are we really improving our comfort conditions and the energy efficiency of buildings?
The answer today is that we need more efficient and smarter buildings, but what is stopping us froom changing the way we use buildings? Platón, in his myth of the cave, tells us that it is a lack of knowledge that hides reality from us. Extrapolated to the present day, the lack of useful and valuable information limits us when it comes to making more objective decisions, based on knowledge and reducing subjectivity.
To answer the question of how we improve the knowledge of buildings, the concept of intelligent buildings comes into play. According to the European Commission, an intelligent building is one that is connected, is able to interact with the systems around it, including users, and can be managed remotely. In other words, it has to behave interactively both with the building´ s energy sytems and with other buildings and even the users themselves. Furthermore, it changes its behaviour from reactive to pro-active to make efficient and effective use of its own resources.
The main enablers of smart buildings are new technologies. Firstly, the IoT (Internet of Things) which, in a nutshell, is defined as the connectivity through the Internet of common elements such as household appliances, cars, mobile phones, etc. It is this technology that makes it possible to turn a traditional building into a connected building, capable of providing data thanks to IoT sensors. Secondly, Artificial Intelligence, which uses data to extract knowledge; the same knwoeldge that, following Platon´ s myth, will guide us out of the cave. Artificial Intelligence is a technique capable of learning from data, extracting patterns of behaviour and predicting future situations. In this way, it is able to anticipate events and enable the building to act proactively. In other words, it is bringing human reasoning to buildings, but making decisions based on objective information.
At CARTIF, we have been working for years in the line of research for the transformation of current buildings into samrter, more comfortable and environmentally friendly buildings. Projects such as BRESAER are a clear example of this transformation. In this project, a decision-making system based on Artificial Intelligence has been developed. This solution allows the building to determine one hour in advance the energy needs to meet the comfrot conditions and to choose the available sources to heat or cool the building.
All this without forgetting that buildings are for us and, therefore, users must be the protagonists. Consumers must be better informed about the behaviour of the building, just as the building must adapt to the preferences of the inhabitant. For example, smart thermostats that learn our habits to ensure a comfortable temperature without the need to configure it. Or even detecting when we leave to switch off and stop consuming gas or electricity, which makes even more sense with today´ s prices. The example of this technology is part if the COMFOStat project.
In conclusion, smart buildings represent the perfect solution that combines today´ s better living conditions with the reduced gas emissions of old. Data and Artificial Intelligence generate the necessary knowledge that will have guided us out of the cave. If you still can´ t find your way, our door is always open to help you.
There is only one good: knowledge. There is only one evil: ignorance.
It is undeniable that the coming decades will be crucial for both the society and the Earth´ s environmental health, so it will be determined if our Planet is able or not to support all the world population. Nowadays, it seems that the situation is more than complicated, and it is becoming worse day by day.
Taking into account this situation, the creation of new policies focused on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is more than needed, fizing a set of clear objectives from now to 2050. In this sense, the main objective of the Estrategia de Descarbonización a Largo Plazo (ELP 2050) created by the Spanish Government calls for a 905 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in relation to 1990, considering that the other 10% will be absorbed by carbon sinks.
Sustainable mobility plays a very important role within all the objectives defined in the aforementiones ELP 2050, so it will be essential to work together to try to change the way we move (specially travelling to and from work). Encouraging the use of electric vehicles and alternative means of transport will be key of achieving a much more sustainable mobility, and it will be also necessary to inform the citizens (e.g. the employees) using the proper information and reasons to do so.
The number of transit journeys on working days surpassed 123 million in 2007, according to the Mobility Survey of the People Resident in Spain of Movilia. Approximately 83% of the Spanish population carries out at least one journey each working day and more than a 16% of these journeys were to go to the workplace. Considering the aforementiones data coming from Movilia (please, note that Movilia does not consider the latests crisis and COVID19 effects due tot he fact that the study was done before), the number ofin itinere transit journeys in 2006-07 was around 37 million out of a total of 123 million (so, around a third), and around a 63% of these in itinere transit journeys were made by private vehicle as indicated in the E-Cosmos project.
As it has been detailed before, in Spain, the labor mobility has a very important influence on collective mobility, according to data from the Observatory of Logistic and Transport in Spain, having a big environmental, social and economic impact specially when those journeys are done by private vehicle.
Additionally, using the private vehicle to go to work is a very important health hazard. In Spain, traffic accidents have become the primary cause of death for accidents at work (around an 11,6% of the accidents at work were related toin itinere traffic accidents according to the Job, Migrations and Social Security Ministery, Spain Government. The amount of sleep time loss to try to avoid traffic jams, the stress caused by driving in peak hours or by being thinking and thinking about being late increases a lot the risk of traffic accident.
To solve these issues, a very good collaboration between companies, public entities and mobility providers (among others) is extremely needed. The establishment of frameworks of collaboration between the aforementioned entities will make possible the creation of real and effective employee´ s sustainable mobility plans taking into account employee´ s needs. These sustainable mobility plans will lead to real and fruitful interventions focused on reducing the amount of in itinere transit journeys done by private car.
Given the great need of encouraging sustainable mobility, from CARTIF we are collaborating with multiple entities with the main aim of developing real sustainable mobility plans. In this sense, we are working with some enterprises (and with all the involved stakeholders) in order to make more sustainable the in itinere transit journeys of their employees.
It is responsibility of everyone to try to take the leap and to actively contribute to Planet decarbonization, so… let´ s fight all together to make an effort to not continue damaging our planet in order to let the new generations to develop themselves in the same (or better) conditions than us.
CARTIF has the know-how to accompany the institutions in thei path to contribute to pur planet decarbonization, and not only concerning sustainable mobility plans, but also in a lot of other actiones that can be carried out in this sense. It´ s now or never.
Climate change is an increasingly visible reality on our planet, affecting millions of people around the world. These changes in climate are clearly recognizable by the increase in temperatures, the decrease in water resources, the sea level rise or the increasingly irregular and torrential precipitation events. The consequences, effects and impacts of these changes in the weather are becoming more frequent and relevant every day, inducing damages of great magnitude and generating a displacement of the population by making the areas in which they lived uninhabitable, with examples such as extreme droughts, floods or desertification. In our day to day, we can see how these changes in the climate manifest themselves. A clear example is the winter that has just started with softer than normal average temperatures and unusual high maximum temperatures for the period of the year.
In this context of climate change, the thermometer continues to break records of increase and it is estimated that in Spain the average temperatures are increasing around 0.3ºC per decade, which gives us an idea of the high rate o warming to whom our country is being subjected and the planet in general. In addition, it must be taken into account that although we manage to reduce the emissions that generate climate change by trying to avoid the consequences it produces, the change trends reflected in the climate variables will continue in the coming decades due to the inertia of the climate system. Faced with such a negative outlok, it is necessary to ask ourselves the following question: how can we contribute to mitigate and reduce the impacts of climate change or adapt to them by generating more resilient territories?
To help us in this fight, mitigation and adaptation strategies are of huge relevance. Mitigation strategies seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, which are ultimately the food of anthropogenic climate change. For their part, adaptation strategies seek to limit the risks derived from climate change, reducing our vulnerabilities. Both strategies are complementary in such a way that, if we do not take mitigation into account, the capacity for adaptation can easily be overwhelmed and developing an adaptation that is not low in emissions is meaningless.
But, what can we do as citizens? We can contribute with small measures such as recycling, the use of public transport or bikes, local commerce that minimizes transport, ecological and sustainable products, all of them helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, adaptation requires great responses that generally must be promoted by the public administrations or organizations that are in charge of land management. Therefore, we must not overlook that the fight against climate change must be an effort of all (citizens, administrations, companies,etc.) integrating as many agents as possible and covering a multisectorial and systemic approach that not lose the social perspective of the problem.
Under this climate change perspective and to promote adaptation, the European Union has launched the Climate Change Adaptation Mission that aims to promote and support the transition towards resilience in Europe at the individual level, cities and regions, both in the private and public sectors as economy, energy, society, etc. Its main objective is to support at least 150 European regions and communities towards climate resilience by 2030. To this end, the mission will help regions and communities to better understand, prepare for and manage their climate risks, seek opportunties, as well as facilitate the implementation of innovative and resilient solutions providing information on the different additional sources of investment.
In a complementary way and to respond to the adaptation needs generated by changes in the climate, it is necessary to provide the entities with a common framework that guarantees a homogeneity of criteria in the conception of climate change. In this sense, the public action against climate change in Spain is coordinated and organized through the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC), which establishes the framework of reference and national coordination for impact assessment initiatives and activities, vulnerability and adaptation. Its main objective is to avoid or reduce present and future damages derived and to build a more resilient economy and society.
This plan that covers the needs at national level establishing the starting point for the development of more detailed strategies at regional or municipal level helping the territories in the acievement of their objectives through the implementation of priority lines of action against the impacts caused by climate change. As a starting point for any adaptation strategy, it is necessary to know in detail how the current and future climate variables (temperature, precipitation, wind, etc.) will be like in order to be able to assess the vulnerability of our territory and promote measures that make it more resilient to climate impacts. As a starting point, the AdapteCCa climate scenario viewer developed by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAMA) in coordination with the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC) and the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) together with the IPCC Interactive Atlas, provide us with relevant data to understand the future climate through different climate projections. All the information they collect allows to obtain an idea of the magnitude of the changes in the future climate to establish the baseline for the evaluation of vulnerability and risk, as well as for the definition of measures for each priority sector identified in each territory. Finally, the implementation of the identified and selected measures must be associated with a monitoring and a follow-up system that enables the achievement of the proposed adaptation objectives to be evaluated.
At CARTIF, we work to help the different public administrations in the development of adaptation plans and strategies in the face of climate change. We must highlight the projects in which we recently work together with GEOCYL Conultoría S.L. in the development of adaptation strategies to climate change for the municipality of Valladolid (EACC_Val project) and the region of Extremadura (EACC_Extremadura project), respectively.
In addition, the RethinkAction project, coordinated by CARTIF will allow us to advance over the effects generated by adaptation and mitigation measures through the development of integrated assessment models that allow the evaluation before implementation of measures in relevant climatic regions of Europe.
The energy sector is undergoing a deep transformation to respond to the need to combat climate change and thus contribute to the sustainability of life onour planet. This is being articulated through the so-called “Energy Transition”, which involves two big transformations in the electricity grid. On the one hand, traditional centralised generation is being replaced by an increasing number of distributed renewable generation plants located closer to the final consumer. In addition, the number of “self-consumers”, i.e. consumers capable of producing renewable energy, mainly photovoltaic, for their own use, is increasing. Secondly, we are witnessing a growth in the demand for electricity, with new needs such as electric vehicles and the air-conditioning of buildings.
All this results ingreater complexity of the electricity grid, especially the distribution grid, but also the transmision grid, because the flow of electricity is no longer unidirectional, but bidirectional. A more flexible management system is essential to make the transmission and distribution of electricity more efficient. Grid operators also need new technologies and tools to ensure a reliable and high quality service. These changes, which are already part of the present, are made possible by the evolution of traditional electricity grids towards smart grids.
The smart grid concept refers to a new feature of the electricity grid: in addition to transporting energy, it also transports data. To achieve this, digital technologies are needed to facilitate two-way communication between the user and the grid, IT and home automation tools to manage demand flexibility and distributed generation and storage resources, as well as the necessary technology and equipment capable of responding to volatile renewable generation.
One of the threats to guaranteeing an adequate and quality supply to the different players in the medium and low voltage network is faults. It is necessary to have the necessary means to locate them quicklly, givinig continuity of supply after a reconfiguration of the network, provided that this is useful to alleviate the effects of the fault, in the shortest possible time.
There are two indices for measuring the quality of supply in an electricity system: SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) and SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index). The SAIFI index takes into account the number of unavailabilities per user, while the SAIDI index takes into account the cumulative time of unavailability. These unavailabilities are generated as a result of various types of faults, the most frequent of which are earth and phase faults, the former being the most frequent.
When an earth fault occurs in a medium-voltage distribution network, the circuit breaker of one of the outlets of the high-voltage to medium-voltage transformer station shall trip by menas of the earth fault protection.
Subsequently, and in order to rule out that the fault is transient, the reclosing function shall operate, closing the circuit breaker. If the fault persists, tripping shall be repeated until the number of reclosings provided has been exhausted. If the fault is permanent, the affected part of the network will be out of service and it will be necessary to locate the fault and reconfigure the network in order to continue providing service to as many users as possible.
Traditionally, follwing the detection of a permanent fault by the telecontrol equipment, it is possible to carry out a remote reconfiguration operation from the control centre. This operation is carried out by an operator, following a defined protocol,and can take several minutes at best.
A modern, automated network will allow this protocol to be carried out without operator intervention, automatically between the telecontrol equipment. This network feature is known as self-healing, and allows the network to reconfigureitself autonomously in the event of a permanent fault, without the manual intervention of the control center. This significantly speeds up the time it takes to restore the power supply.
CARTIF has developed, within the framework of the INTERPRETER project (H2020, GA#864360), an assistance tool aimed at medium and low voltage grid operators. This tool, known as GCOSH-TOOL, helps to evaluate different scenarios by applying diferrent action protocols in the event of the appereance of one or more faults in the network. Its operation is based on proposing a seqeunce of optimisation problems with different constraints and objective functions, which allows the power to be delivered to each customer to be calculated, ensuring that the demand is met. To do this, a reconfiguration of the grid will be necessary to ensure electricity supply to the largest possible number of users in the scenario chosen by the operator based on technical and economic objectives.
The smart grids of the future will be more flexible and reliable than traditonal grids and will provide a higher quality of electricity supply to users. They will be connected in real time, receiving and providing information that will allow them to optimise their own electricity consumption and improve the operation of the overall system (active demand management). On the other hand, the trend towards distributed generation from renewable sources leads to a structure in the form of interconnected microgrids that will have the capacity to automatically reconfigure themselves in the event of any breakdown. The rapid evolution of technology is allowing these changes to take place very quickly, so that the so-called energy transition is becoming a reality, and we already have the infrastructure in place to reduce CO2 emissions, thus helping to curb climate change.
