VPS helps Lisboa City Council to save energy

Lisbon City Council’s Campo Grande building is the one chosen to be included in the inteGRIDy project - Integrated Smart GRID Cross-Functional Solutions for Optimized Synergetic Energy Distribution, Utilization & Storage Technologies. This four-year project, which is part of the H2020 Programme, aims to develop a platform to facilitate and optimize operations in a distribution network using energy storage technologies and renewable energy sources.

Ten examples of small-scale (buildings) and large-scale (city/region) applications will be studied in eight European countries, with a total of 30 European partners involved in the project. In the Council’s Services Building, where the Portuguese case study will be developed, 2,000 people work daily and where 60 electric vehicles, that are part of the municipal fleet, are charged in two charging stations with a total of 60 recharge points, registering an average consumption of 3.2 GWh.

Virtual Power Solutions will apply its technology in order to reduce the electricity consumption of the chosen building, in a joint effort that includes the Lisbon E-Nova - Lisbon’s Energy and Environmental Agency, the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, PH Energia and Energia Simples.

The project will include systems to predict the energy produced by a photovoltaic power plant (in order to generate more electricity while reducing grid load), integration of dynamic tariffs and, in the Automated Demand Response part, ice banks will be used to store or to schedule electric vehicle charging periods (to match the lowest fare periods).

This pilot project intends to realise and evaluate the impact that the installation of photovoltaic solar panels, electric vehicle charging and storage of energy in ice tanks will have in the consumption of the building, integrating them in an intelligent virtual system that allows an efficient energy management. It will also have the support and external collaboration of the Lisbon City Council, which owns the building, and Galp, which will allow the analysis of photovoltaic production data in the solar field of the University of Lisbon.