Completed research project: Sustainable decentralised power generation
The completed NRP 70 joint project developed a comprehensive and integrated methodology for sustainable, decentralised multi-energy-hub systems at neighbourhood scale.
The results of the completed NRP 70 joint project “Integration of sustainable multi-energy-hub systems at neighbourhood scale” (IMES) enable the optimal design, operation, control and evaluation of decentralised multi-energy-hub systems (MES) at neighbourhood scale, accounting for techno-economic and societal factors.
The integrated methodology developed under the direction of Prof. Marco Mazzotti at the Department of Process Engineering of ETH Zurich was applied to optimally design and control the MES of two Swiss case studies, namely the rural village of Zernez (GR) and the urban neighbourhood of Altstetten (ZH).
For each case study the optimal portfolio of technologies, as well as the optimal control strategies, for satisfying electricity and heat demands while minimising the total annual costs and CO2 emissions of the energy systems was determined. Furthermore, the project team evaluated the impact of renewable availability and changes in energy demand on the feasibility of achieving the goals of the Energy Strategy 2050 for different possible techno-economic MES scenarios from today to 2050.