The City of Arnhem goes smart with OpenRemote’s Energy Management Solution
The iEMS comes to Arnhem
The City of Arnhem is making headway with a new energy management system, the CME iEMS, paving the way to become energy neutral by 2035. The system, developed by OpenRemote, will enable the city’s energy managers to automate and oversee a distributed energy system combining solar and wind power installations, electric fleet chargers, cold ironing for ships and battery storage, through a powerful desktop and mobile application.
The open source IoT-based system, the iEMS, is a key part of our CleanMobilEnergy project, and will be implemented in the CME City Pilots of Arnhem, Nottingham, London and Schwäbisch-Gmünd. It aims to demonstrate the integration and intelligent management of various renewable energy sources, storage devices and electric vehicles (EVs) and the optimisation of energy consumption so that EVs can be charged with 100 percent renewable energy offered at an optimum price.
In Arnhem, the solar and wind energy produced at Kleefsewaard, an industrial park located east of the city, is used for charging electric vehicles across the city as well as powering the ships docked in its harbour (cold ironing). In order to maximise the use of local renewable energy, the City of Arnhem required an energy management solution capable of predicting power generation, as well as optimising the vehicle charging and cold ironing, through the use of an additional energy storage unit. The application, built on OpenRemote’s open-source IoT platform, will enable the city’s energy managers and maintenance crews to evaluate the performance of all system components on-the-go – at any time or place.
Smart System Optimisation
The system is able to forecast power generation, consumption and carbon costs for the upcoming 24 hours. These essential data points are used to define optimal charging and discharging cycles for the energy storage unit, and assess the vehicle fleet storage capacity, while considering the minimum required power indicated by the charging service provider.
The application will feature a dashboard to enable energy managers to supervise the whole system and monitor financial and carbon savings through a set of performance indicators. An “Insights” section within the app will display key system parameters such as such local energy production, self-consumption or saved costs in a personalised, single-page view. Users will also automatically be alerted by the app in case of abnormal system behaviour, as determined per pre-defined rules, and receive a first analysis of the potential root cause.
“We are currently developing our own customized solution with our suppliers, Allego, Shorepower Netherlands, Super-B and NRG Energy, and the active support of the OpenRemote team. The end result will be a smart energy management system that is tailored to our specific optimisation and reporting needs and hosted in our own secure environment. It will become a key tool to facilitate and improve the work of both our energy managers and maintenance personnel,” commented Peter Swart, Energy Programme Manager at the City of Arnhem.
Open source energy management for any city
Established in 2015, OpenRemote is a professional open source IoT project, which overcomes the challenges of integrating many different communication protocols and data sources into a single, easy to use data management and control solution. The ambition is to offer a complete open source distributed energy management system for any city pursuing an ambitious sustainable energy strategy. For more information please visit www.openremote.io.
