Glasgow pushes on with implementation of smart and sustainable solutions in European project
The City of Glasgow is committed to a net-zero emissions target and sees the work of RUGGEDISED as helping to deliver on its ambitions. With a relaunch of the City’s ‘Sustainable Glasgow’ initiative on 25 February – leading up to the city hosting COP26 in November – Glasgow is ready to share its ambitious plans with the world. “RUGGEDISED and Sustainable Glasgow proves Glasgow’s commitment to becoming a more sustainable city and to achieve substantial CO2 reductions without leaving anyone behind. A smarter integration of renewable energy while fighting fuel poverty is what we are doing in RUGGEDISED, and I am happy we can contribute to make Glasgow a leader on the issue of our time – the fight against climate change,” says Gavin Slater, RUGGEDISED Project Lead for the City of Glasgow. Since the City was awarded funding from the European Commission in 2016, the RUGGEDISED partners in Glasgow have worked to create a ‘Smart Street’ in the city centre through the implementation of ten RUGGEDISED solutions. The smart solutions specifically look into: • Maximising consumption within the district from local energy generation; • Increasing the use of electric vehicles to improve air quality and reducing CO2 emissions; • Demonstrating that electric vehicle charging, intelligent street lighting and other controllable systems can be used in a demand-side management system to manage different loads in the power grid; • Creating contract models for local generators and consumers to better share heat and power; • Developing an analytics engine to upscale the solutions implemented. Through the RUGGEDISED project, Glasgow has had the opportunity to develop ground-breaking contractual models to allow companies and other entities to exchange surplus heat energy from one entity to the other. Extensive work, though not yet finalised, has also been undertaken to create an electric vehicle charging hub with a solar canopy and battery storage to both support the uptake of electric vehicles in Glasgow and potentially help alleviate peak loads in the energy grid. Central to many of the solutions implemented in Glasgow is a network of intelligent street lights already deployed throughout the ‘Smart Street’ area. These intelligent streetlights are linked to a new Central Management System, and in 2020 an electric vehicle charging functionality will be integrated into selected street lights. In addition to the possibility of charging electric vehicles, the lights installed already connect the city with other smart solutions deployed by RUGGEDISED through a wireless communications network. Benefiting from a more connected city and the data shared through the intelligent street lights, a bespoke data based decision platform, designed internally by Glasgow City Council, collects, analyses and visualises data to be used as a tool to shape decision making processes for both the city and the wider public. This platform is up and running. A better connected city will also allow the final three solutions in Glasgow to serve their purposes of lessening fuel poverty and provide the city with the tools needed for demand-side management in the power grid. Currently, demand-side management systems have been installed and are being tested in the intelligent street lights, in a domestic building and in the connection to a building management system in a non-domestic building. Learn a lot more about Glasgow’s work to implement the RUGGEDISED solutions in the city’s first implementation report available on www.ruggedised.eu/cities/glasgow
Keywords
Glasgow, Mobility, Smart Cities, Smart City, technology, innovation, renewable energy