Energy conservation as solution to grid congestion

Grid congestion Learn & Share is an initiative by the Amsterdam Economic Board, Alliander, Centre of Expertise City Net Zero (HvA) and Waag Futurelab. This edition was held on 18 March at NIO House in Amsterdam.

Ieteke Schouten (Actienetwork GasTerug) outlined the opportunities that energy conservation can provide to alleviate grid congestion. She illustrated these with the actienetwork’s successful projects. Such as the ‘lights out’ campaign, in which office buildings turned off their lights at night, for example at the Zuidas. In projects focused on personal heating, cooling hubs, circular curtains, sustainable cooling systems, and white roofs, the action network still sees many opportunities.

Want to know more about these projects? Please contact Noor Veenhoven at noor@amsterdaminchange.com.

Energy conservation projects and challenges

In three breakout sessions, we addressed energy conservation projects and challenges.

Accelerating energy savings

During the breakout session by Lara Jongejans (Green Business Club), we learned how they are activating the ‘Green Business Clubs’ in the Netherlands with various initiatives. In the area of energy conservation, they focused on three projects:

• Focus on preventing visible energy waste. As in the ‘Lights out’ campaigns at the Amsterdam Zuidas among others
• Smarter setting of climate systems (air conditioning, heating)
• Roadmaps: Increase understanding of current building performance and opportunities for savings.

For many Green Business Club projects, a blanket approach does not work well. Building and maintaining relationships is the key to creating a movement.

No air conditioning but ICECUBE

Arthur van der Lee (Dutch Climate Systems) approached the negative impact of air conditioning in this breakout session. 10% of our global electricity consumption comes from air conditioning. So there is a lot of energy savings to be gained here. Arthur’s solution was the ICECUBE, a natural way of cooling that is 80% more energy efficient and emits no greenhouse gases.

This cooling technology works on the basis of dew-point cooling. The warmer it gets, the more powerful the ICECUBE cools.

How do we focus on energy savings among Amsterdammers?

The City of Amsterdam is facing a major challenge with the energy transition. There is a need for collective heating, natural gas-free building and the electricity grid needs to be reinforced. One of the themes that the city of Amsterdam is working on to achieve these goals is Support and Behavior: Focusing on 15-25% energy savings by the people of Amsterdam.

In this breakout session, Mimi Eelman (City of Amsterdam) tackled the question of how to achieve this goal. We split into two groups. One group delved into the experiential world of the resident and the other group into the world of the entrepreneur in Amsterdam. What do they need to start saving energy?

This was the latest edition of Grid congestion Learn & Share, after four previous editions in this event series:

1. What is grid congestion?
2. Energy transition via the societal route
3. Labour Market
4. Flexibility

Read more about unusual solutions that enable energy transition in our exploration Energy Transition through Local Vigour.