Transition to a sustainable urban energy system from a long-term perspective: Case study in a Japanese business district

This paper investigates alternative prospects for an urban energy system from a long-term perspective in order to achieve a reduction in CO₂ emission by more than 50% of the current emission in the Japanese commercial sector. This will assist in making strategic choices with regard to the implementation of available technologies in order to create a substantial change. A simulation model based on the bottom-up approach – a fundamental part of the evaluation framework of technology implementation scenarios – provides insights into the changes required in all the components of urban energy systems from the equipment level to the entire building and systems level and finally to the neighborhood and city levels. This model is applied to the Yodoyabashi district, a central business district in Osaka, Japan, in order to predict the end-use energy consumption and CO₂ emission under various scenarios. This is based on different concepts of community energy management. The results of this case study suggest that we can achieve a reduction of 60–90% of the current CO₂ emission by the middle of the 21st century.     

Innovative method for energy management: Modelling and optimal operation of energy systems

This paper presents an optimal management control strategy for power systems in industrial plants. A dedicated code has been developed to perform system analysis and simulation. The energy/mass balances existing between building and power plant has been depicted through a mathematical model based on vector equations, taking into account the behaviour of each system component. The main result is the definition of the power plant component set points satisfying the energy load under predefined optimization criterion (i.e. system efficiency, costs, pollutant emissions). Input data are the industrial plant loads, both electric and thermal, the technical characteristic of the installations, and the cost of electricity and fuel. As a general result we show that the optimal management of a power plant is as significant as the efficiency of its components for energy saving purposes. In particular, the correlation between the component set point profiles and the energy/cost/pollution savings is highlighted. Yearly simulations are performed on an existing energy system of an industrial plant varying the frequency of energy load dataset. The considered time steps are month, half a day, 4 h and 1 h. The results demonstrate that the whole power plant management leads to a global reduction of the cost and that the availability of more detailed energy load dataset leads to better operation cost estimation. As expected, considering a large time-step, the variation of energy load is not appreciable.The energy saving potential of this method is demonstrated allowing the best plant management solution under different energy loads.     

An optimization model for water quantity and quality integrated management of an urban lake in a water deficient city

This paper presents an optimization model for water quantity and quality integrated management of an urban lake in a water deficient city. A representative water quantity and quality safeguard system served urban lake, including multi-source water supply facilities, recirculating water purification facilities and surplus water discharge facilities, is widely used in Chinese water deficient cities. Because it is complicated, any mismanagement will result in water quality deterioration, water waste and high operation cost. The presented model attempts to achieve the objectives of controlling water pollution, reducing economic cost and improving water utilization efficiency through an optimized operating water safeguard system. The model is applied to Qingjing Lake in Tianjin, China. Results show that the model plays a more positive role for water quantity and quality integrated management.