A digital infrastructure to contribute to the deployment of a positive energy district: the example of Dijon

The city of Dijon is the winner and pilot of a European project that aims to develop and test innovative solutions for the deployment of a positive energy district. It has set itself the objective of reducing energy consumption by 38% through the renovation of buildings (“static” component) and reducing this consumption by a further 15% through intelligent energy management (“dynamic” component).

The scope of the project includes 5 social housing buildings, 3 school buildings and a gymnasium. The issue of energy management is particularly interesting because its financial cost represents less than 5% of the cost of thermal renovation.

The technical choices of intelligent energy management are based on the deployment of Ready2Service digital infrastructures (interoperable smart building network) to guarantee the control of data management, the management and the remote control of installations.

In homes as well as schools, all traditional radiators will be controlled with connected thermostatic heads (without batteries and wireless, in “energy harvesting” mode) from software capable of monitoring and managing absences, anticipating weather variations, analyzing the thermal behavior of the building and improving the way of controlling. These solutions are not intrusive and always leave the hand to the occupant who remains “master” and which aims to make the citizens actor of the energy performance.

At the district level, thanks to the R2S (Ready2Service) infrastructure, each building will be able to share its energy needs and consumption data with an “Energy Management System” energy platform. This same infrastructure will allow other usage functions to be added because it is by definition interoperable (open solution, unlike so-called “proprietary” solutions): it is therefore a virtuous approach where pooling allows deployment costs to be reduced and the carbon footprint to be reduced, and is a guarantee of scalability and simplicity.