Towards Positive Energy Districts in Smart Cities: A Data-Driven Approach Using Aggregation and Disaggregation of Energy Balance Calculations

Positive energy districts (PEDs) are seen as a promising pathway to facilitating energy transition. PEDs are urban areas composed of different buildings and public spaces with local energy production, where the total annual energy balance must be positive. Urban areas consist of a mix of different buildings, such as households and service sector consumers (offices, restaurants, shops, cafes, supermarkets), which have a different annual energy demand and production, as well as a different consumption profile. This paper presents a data modeling approach to estimating the annual energy balance of different types of consumer categories in urban areas and proposes a methodology to extrapolate energy demands from specific building types to the aggregated level of an urban area and vice versa. By dividing an urban area into clusters of different consumer categories, depending on parameters such as surface area, building type and energy interventions, energy demands are estimated. The presented modeling approach is used to model and calculate the energy balance and CO2 emissions in two PED areas of the City of Groningen (The Netherlands) proposed in the Smart City H2020 MAKING CITY project.