Portrait HES-SO, involved with smart grids from their inception
As well as its status as a high-quality higher education network, the HES-SO also makes a valuable contribution to scientific research with projects such as Smart Energy and Green Line. With more than 15,000 students spread over 33 campuses in western Switzerland, the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO) is Switzerland’s largest professional higher education network. The teaching is based on essentially practical foundations to enable students to gain rapid acceptance into the higher echelons of the professional world. Apart from its educational mission, the HES-SO is also active in applied research and development. It promotes skills networking and technology transfer, cooperating with the worlds of science and the economy, which is how the HES-SO came to be involved in the idea of smart grids right from their inception.
Professor of Telecommunications at the ICT Institute of the HEIG-VD school, explains the project further : « On the basis of this information we will be capable of obtaining usage statistics for the residence which will enable automatic or semi-automatic intelligent decisions to be made without affecting the comfort of the consumer. It is fully realistic to expect energy savings in the region of 20 to 30%. » This interdisciplinary project is being undertaken by cooperation between the different schools in the network : at Yverdon work is being done at the physical level of the electronics, while Sion, which specialises in networks, is concentrating on routing the information. Fribourg is managing the information processing and artificial intelligence side, while Neuchâtel is working on the marketing aspects, to determine in particular who the target customers will be.
The SmartEnergy project – defining the concept Against a background of growing energy consumption coupled with limited production, the SmartEnergy project, carried out between 2008 and 2010, had the objective of developing dedicated economic and technological energy management modules. « This project took place during the early throes of development of what became known as the smart grid. » Dominique Gabioud, Professor at the HES-SO Valais, goes on to say : « We participated in the definition of the smart grid from a technical and economic point of view as well as that of Swiss regulatory policy. » He also explains that the smart grid is designed in particular to inform and involve consumers and to improve the global functioning of an electricity distribution network by improving the coordination of its elements, such as heat pumps, boilers, combined heating and power units, small-scale hydro generators. « When we discussed this project in 2007, we soon realised the information technologies would have to be standardised in order to link all the elements concerned in a simple fashion. » Dominique Gabioud believes that this first HES-SO interdisciplinary project has also given rise to some of the technologies that would, in time, come to be included in a smart grid, in particular that which led to the founding of the company Geroco.
The Green Line project – developing an information processing platform
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The subsequent Green Line project was set up to create a platform for processing information in the home. This involves gathering information on occupancy periods, humidity and temperature measurements, household appliance consumption, etc., and using the electricity network to transfer this data to a central platform which processes the figures in order to minimise the overall energy consumption within the home. Hervé Dedieu, CleantechAlps - For a better understanding of cleantech in western Switzerland
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