Publications

Description

Authors: Susan Pierce, Fabiano Pallonetto, Lorenzo De Donatis, Mattia De Rosa

Abstract: University campuses can be considered as microcosms of urban districts, since they are typically located within or near a city and have a significant impact on the surrounding area. Moreover, they have a high energy consumption due to the large number of buildings, facilities, and services that use energy for transportation, heating, cooling, and lighting. This makes university campus as testing facility for decarbonisation strategies that can be replicated in other urban areas. The present study discusses a decision-making framework based on a digital twin model for analysing decarbonisation strategies of University College Dublin in Ireland. The thermal and electricity networks of the university campus are modelled to analyse the current status of energy consumption and associated (opens in a new window)carbon dioxide emissions. Five future development scenarios are explored to identify the optimum pathway for decarbonisation. Conclusions show that the campus can achieve a 10% reduction in emissions without the need for new generation units, while introduction of a new biomass (opens in a new window)CHP unit would increase this reduction to 17% compared to the baseline. Furthermore, Coupling this with the installation of 3 MW of (opens in a new window)solar photovoltaic, the calculated campus potential, a total reduction of 26% can be achieved.