Jette, Brussels

Site overview

The Brussels Health Campus containing the university hospital (Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel UZB-VUB) and part of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), is an advanced energy island owning and running a state-of-the-art microgrid that can work in island mode for 5 consecutive days. The Hospital, built in year 1977, has a capacity of 844 beds, distributed over a total area of 132.000 square meters.

It includes a thermal and electricity grid, waste water recovery, a high-speed glass-fibre telecom network and a total of 33 HV transformers divided over HV 18 substations.  Energy production and storage include photovoltaics, 3 emergency generators and a total capacity of 2,5 MWh in battery storage. The microgrid serves the hospital complex, 250 student dwellings, the faculty of health sciences, a primary school and a fitness centre.

Users

The Health Campus is built in a peri-urban context rich in nature and parks, where hi-tech industries, offices and student housing coexist. Every year one hundred (100) students dwell in the university campus.

Pilot Objectives

The microgrid contains about a 1000 smart metres that are included in the Building Management System. The microgrid system is conceived to go in island mode with complete automatic transition in a maximum of 15 seconds to critical need and 3 minutes to comfort need. Cutting edge control technology and maximal reliability are the focus points of this demonstration site.

VUB will develop and introduce the scenarios in the controllers of the Building Management System. The implementation of batteries in the microgrid does not only allow for internal balancing and renewable energy storage, but also allows to foster trading in the reserve markets.

The measurements of the 1000 smart metres are stored at VUB and will be used as an open source simulation platform for the testing of the software tools and algorithms developed. In fact, the historical data will not only be used to improve the models, but also to allow the testing of virtual communities, smart clustering and trading mechanisms.