Spectral

Houten, a Dutch town of 50,000 inhabitants, recently developed the “Ecowijk” ecological neighborhood, Mandora, an experimental neighborhood that runs completely off 100% renewable energy. The neighborhood consists of 36 houses, of which 30 use gasless heat pumps, and each home has its own solar energy generating system (PV). This neighborhood runs off Greenchoice renewable energy. This initiative contributes to Greenchoice’s Altijd Groen (Always Green) mission – a goal where all energy consumed is used entirely by renewable sources. Spectra Advisory Services joined the project to perform analysis for insight into how the Altijd Groen mission can be achieved.

The City of Amsterdam has signed into law a ban on petrol and diesel vehicles in 2030, with public buses and coaches that emit exhaust fumes to no longer enter the city center from 2022. This is in attempts to curb emissions and pollution in the Unesco Heritage site. GVB, the Amsterdam public transportation service provider, must comply with the mandate and is working to transition its fleet to a 100% renewable energy run bus fleet. Recently, GVB purchased 31 electric busses to kick off the transition to a fully electric fleet. Spectral Advisory services were tasked with developing an exploratory report for smart solutions for GVB to integrate this plan while maintaining the business case for success and a short ROI.

Energy supplier Greenchoice and Greener Power Solutions have opened a charging hub for mobile battery containers at the Hellegatsplein wind farm. The flex charging hub is equipped to accommodate ten mobile batteries, which are linked to the national electricity grid and are charged directly from the four existing windmills. Spectral has developed the software that ensures correct control of the batteries so services can be provided to help balance the national electricity grid. This mobile battery docking station is a first for the Netherlands – making Hellegatsplein windfarm a hybrid sustainable energy + mobile battery storage plant.The ultimate goal: to make fossil fuel power plants obsolete.

Spectral has teamed up with GIGA Storage to optimize and steer the large-scale, GIGA Rhino, battery – a 12 MW grid-connected battery provided by NEC. The GIGA Rhino battery will be the most powerful energy storage project in the Netherlands with the storage capacity of the annual electricity consumption of 5,000 households.
Spectral will be implementing a Smart Energy Control System (SECS) – which is a sophisticated smart energy platform that optimizes the performance of the battery and facilitates integration with the electricity markets and deliver ancillary services to the grid.

In September 2019, Spectral was commissioned by NSI, one of the largest commercial real-estate companies in the Netherlands, to implement their Smart Building Platform (SBP) in order to demonstrate the platform’s data analytics and active control capabilities. As part of the project, Spectral has implemented data collection services to aggregate diverse data streams from across NSI’s entire portfolio and to visualize them via the platform’s intuitive online interface. Not only will the SBP enable NSI to quickly assess the performance of their real estate assets and gain insights into savings opportunities, various data export tools support quick reporting for EED compliance and yearly benchmarking via platforms like GRESB.

Aside from opting for the portfolio-wide data analytics feature, NSI also selected one of their office buildings in Amsterdam (of 18.000 m2) to roll-out the SBP’s active control package. In October 2019, Spectral successfully installed their smart building controller on-site, and the go-live of the building’s active control is planned for November 1st, 2019.

Following the successful launch of the Hartel II project in March 2019 (the largest wind + battery plant in the Netherlands), Spectral has been commissioned by Greenchoice to scale-up their wind turbine control platform across all of the wind assets in Greenchoice’s portfolio. The platform is turbine agnostics and supports integration with wind assets from a wide range of manufacturers. Through connection to the wind farm SCADA systems, the platform is able to optimize the control of the turbines and enable delivery of grid balancing services. The platform’s user interface features a 3D digital twin of the connected assets where real-time data and operational statistics are visualized for complete oversight of system performance. As of October 2019, more than 45 MW across three sites have been successfully connected with plans to expand to an additional 150 MW of Greenchoice’s wind farms in 2020.

Republica Papaverweg is an area development of 20.000 m2 located in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam North, consisting of a large hotel, three residential buildings, two commercial buildings, and a large parking structure. Following a comprehensive feasibility study which demonstrated a positive business case, Spectral supported the developers in successfully acquiring the “Experimenteerregeling,” a special regulatory exemption which permits the development of a private microgrid for the site. Spectral is responsible for the engineering of Republica’s smart energy systems, which will include an integrated (private) electrical and thermal network, centralized heat pumps coupled to an Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) system, local PV production plants, smart E.V. charging points, and a 1,2 MWh battery system. Following the construction / realization phase (which will run from Q4 2019 – Q1 2021), Spectral will facilitate active management of Republica’s smart-grid via implementation of the Spectral Energy Control Systems (SECS) platform which will enable intelligent coordination of local supply and demand, as well as delivery of flexibility services to the market. Republica will also act as one of the core demonstration sites within ATELIER, a 5 year innovation program supported by the EU Commission (starting November 1st, 2019) which aims to scale up smart, energy positive districts and support the emergence of new market roles, such as local energy communities.

The City of Groningen has an ambitious vision to be energy neutral by 2025, with all the energy used in the city originating from renewable sources. Their goal is to be a powerful example of sustainability to other cities in the Netherlands and part of this vision is the “Energie delen met je buren” (“Sharing energy with your neighbours”) project for which Spectral was selected to implement the technical solution, to advise on the regulatory changes needed to scale the solution and to support the city in getting local communities on board.

Phase 1 involves households (including prosumers) in the Reitdiep neighbourhood, exchanging energy with each other using blockchain as the key supporting technology. In phase 2, this energy exchange will be scaled up to neighbourhood level within Groningen with the Selwerd neighbourhood participating alongside Reitdiep. In the subsequent phases, when the social, economic, regulatory and technical challenges have been addressed, the goal is to scale this sustainable solution to province and, eventually, national level.

Spectral’s technology development incorporates both hardware and software. Our new tamper-proof, small-scale device for writing energy data to the blockchain will be connected with the smart meter in each participating household. Accompanying software will enable the local market for energy transactions which will then be visualised for all participants. In the long term, as the project scales, these local markets will be connected with the wholesale and balancing markets, thereby facilitating a blockchain-enabled platform for a fully-integrated, decentralised energy market.

Spectral was commissioned by INNAX and BAM Energy Systems in order to develop an integral plan for a high performance smart-grid for the Bijlmer Bajes Kwartier development project. The project will consist of more than 1.350 new apartments, several commercial buildings, and a school, amounting to more than 135.000 m2 of newly developed real estate. The energy concept for the area includes local renewable generation systems based on PV, wind, and biogas, large-scale centralized battery systems, smart heat pumps combined with an aquifer thermal storage system, and intelligent coordination of local supply and demand via Spectral’s energy management system (SEMS).

In May 2018, the Triple B consortium, which includes Spectral, LENS, and Ymere, launched a real-world pilot to explore opportunities for empowering local energy communities to take control of their own energy supply and to actively participate in the market. According to Article 16 of the upcoming EU Clean Energy Package, energy communities should be able to: “…own community networks and autonomously manage them [and] to access all organized markets.” With the upcoming regulatory changes, the increasingly important role of energy communities, and the growing demand for sustainable and affordable energy for prosumers, new market mechanisms are required. As a result, Triple B is developing innovative business models that leverage the latest capabilities of smart energy technology to allow energy communities to actively trade on the energy markets, while using shared assets such as PV and batteries to keep their collective supply and demand in balance.

“Blijburg” is a beach complex located in Amsterdam East which consists of two restaurants, a snackbar, and an events space. Spectral was responsible for the design and implementation of an advanced microgrid at Blijburg. As part of the project, Spectral delivered a pre-integrated energy storage system which ensures that all of the solar energy is consumed in-house. Furthermore, Spectral’s energy management system schedules and controls the battery, heat pumps, and the largest appliances in the building in order to manage peak power demand, enabling Blijburg to considerably reduce their demand charges by using a smaller, “kleinverbruikers” grid connection. One of the innovative aspects of the microgrid is the integral VRV heat pump system, which combines space heating, hot water, cooling, refrigeration, and heat recovery ventilation all into one system. Thus, the waste heat from the beer coolers and walk-in refrigerators is used directly for Blijburg’s heating needs, allowing for the highest levels of thermal efficiency possible. Aside from providing a highly positive business case for Blijburg, the project also resulted in more than 65.000 kg in yearly CO2 emissions reductions.