Romande Energie teams up with university
Romande Energie and the HEIG College of Engineering are joining forces. To this end, they are strengthening their existing collaboration with a framework agreement.
Romande Energie and HEIG, the engineering and business school in Vaud, have signed a framework agreement on their future collaboration. In it, they underline their will to jointly produce innovations for the energy transition, they write in a statement. The agreement covers topics such as energy storage, future distribution grids, renewable energies, mobility and hydrogen.
Collaboration could take various forms, such as research contracts, projects with the support of Innosuisse or European institutions as well as participation in education and training programs.
For planners and energy suppliers
The Vaud energy provider and the university of applied sciences are already working together on various projects. For example, they have set up the ReIne laboratory at HEIG, which allows an experimental approach to smart grids. They are also collaborating in the European project IntegrCiTy which deals with the interoperability of energy networks in cities.
One promising innovation project is as follows:
1.) Develop an integrated decision support environment for planners and utilities to improve the efficiency and resilience of the energy supply infrastructure;
2.) Implementation of the decision support platform and integrated tools in selected cities for local utilities and city governments.
Today, urban energy networks - natural gas, electricity and heating/cooling - are almost always planned and built separately. This closed approach prevents utilities and urban planners from identifying opportunities for synergies between networks and optimally planning investments in heavy infrastructure.
The objective of this ERA-NET project "Smart Cities" is to promote the interoperability of energy networks in existing and future urban infrastructure by developing a decision support tool to be applied, tested and validated in three cities in Switzerland and Sweden - Vevey, Geneva and Stockholm.
The IntegrCiTy project is funded within the ERA-NET ENSCC and by the industrial partners.
