Making-City lighthouse project in Oulu

TEXT: Klaus Känsälä, Principal Scientist, Industrial IoT/Smart Energy/VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland and Samuli Rinne, Project Manager, City of Oulu

MAKINGCITY LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT IN OULU

Making-City Lighthouse project was is started in 2019 and will be continued to 2023. It has two Lighthouse cities, Groningen and Oulu, acting as pilot sites for new innovations and demonstrations. The main focus is to use local resources in living and mobility thus reducing emissions and promoting collaboration in city planning between municipal authorities and citizens.

THE new element brought to the planning table is called zero energy block (or positive energy district, PED). It is an area, which is self-sufficient with energy at least on the summer season. In Oulu the demo actions are done in Kaukovainio, which is a suburb of about 3000 inhabitants.

Kaukovainio has been built mainly between 1965 and 1975. It is located about three kilometres from the city centre. Like many of its peers in Finland and elsewhere, it has had a bit downward direction at least what comes to the reputation and the general willingness to pay for the flats in the area. On the other hand, many of the inhabitants see the area a very nice place to live in.

The City of Oulu and private companies have started a development program to promote this area to have more diverse social structure in the region. The perquisites are quite good, since the buildings are surrounded by green areas and a lot of trees. It is also a peaceful place with very little social problems.

Thus, there is a new private-owned block of flats under construction (building company YIT) and also new rental housing (built by city-owned company Sivakka) with high technical quality. In addition, Sivakka renovates one apartment block. More, the old shopping centre was replaced by a new one by Arina, a local member of S-group retail chain. Also, a multi-purpose building including e.g. school and library is one part. All of these are also a part of the Making-City project and they from the zero energy block.

The buildings in this block share the district heating (DH) pipeline, the communication facilities and data collection system as well. The mix of brand new and renovated buildings combined with rental and private owned apartments and public and commercial spaces makes the area interesting and also a one well representing the practical situation in many cases.

The people living in the demo area are also involved in the project and will be able to give their feedback by surveys and online user interfaces. One of the opportunities in the project is to find successful business models which can be scaled up to city level to boost the development towards green city goals and City Vision 2050.

Energy is supplied from the heat and electricity networks, when the own production is not enough. System is flexible, which makes it possible to have large shares of wind and solar power. Heat pump cools down the return water of district heating and supplies heat for space heating and hot tap water Electricity from solar panels Heat pump cools down the outcoming air from ventilation and supplies heat for space heating and hot tap water

Heat from solar collectors, with heat pump also in winter

In summer excess heat to boreholes, in winter heat extraction from those District heating network enables transferring heat from one place to another

Heat from grocery store refrigeration to district heating network Heat is recovered from sewage water to preheat hot tap water

Klaus Känsälä

“I have been working in Technical Research Centre of Finland since 1989. I have had an opportunity to work as a project engineer, expert and product development manager in numerous domestic and international projects.

This work has covered topics like wireless metering, database solutions and distributed energy systems. I have also been developing wireless metering solutions for Smart Grid applications and consulting corporations and public organisations on energy markets, energy technologies, demandresponsive concepts and renewable production. In holidays and leisure time I prefer go hiking and fishing in Lapland.” HEAT RECOVERY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY IN A NEW PLATFORM In the above mentioned buildings renewable energy technologies are demonstrated. PV panels are installed both in the roof and wall. The vertical position is favourable since it produces more electricity in spring and in autumn. This helps to balance the energy balance in three seasons. Wintertime is the most challenging period since the electricity consumption in Finland in winter is about one third more than in the summertime.

The grocery store has CO2-refrigerant-based heat pumps, which supply heat from the refrigerated spaces in the shop to the DH network, which exists in the area and in Oulu in general. The store has also PV panels on the roof and boreholes to store the excess heat in the summertime to be used later.

The store with this equipment is up and running. The heat fed to the DH seem to be about 200 kWh/a/store-m2. The cooling equipment is supplied by Caverion.

In apartment blocks there is a good insulation and different kinds of heat recoveries. The main component is a heat pump, which takes its heat from the district heating (DH) return water, with COP of 5…7.

In Oulu DH system this makes sense, since e.g. the cooler return flow makes it possible to produce more electricity for the same heat load in the CHP plants and more energy is gained from flue gas scrubbers.

Another heat source demonstrated in the project is exhaust air from the apartments. It is here and also in general used in existing buildings with no original ventilation heat recover system.

In addition to conventional water-based heat storages in the system, there are also those based on phase-change-material (PCM) demonstrated. This far the work has been identifying different materials and the suitable place for the installation. This has been done by VTT.

To control the HP and other systems the single equipment units have their own controls as native

properties. In addition to that there is a “top level” control system over those. This may be needed e.g. to control the overall situation, regarding to energy production balance in larger networks etc.

Parts of the control-related issues are also the visualization units in the flats. They help the inhabitants to have an idea of their energy and water consumption and by this way hopefully reducing it. A new data platform has also been developed, to share the abovementioned measurement data, remembering privacy issues.

However, to have the good physical and mental feelings, there are no strict set values of e.g. room temperatures, but rather “soft” measures. E.g. University of Oulu is involved in these, as well as urban planning process studies and its development.

As a result of the experiences got from these demonstrations and the existing knowledge, we have started to establish a City Vision 2050, from the City of Oulu side and had some internal workshops about the issue. The target may not be to set one exact path, but rather scenarios or steps towards the target, which is emission-free future with moderate cost and social sustainability. This work includes the gathering of the data of the energy consumption breakdown and possible futures.

Samuli Rinne

“As an MSc of energy engineering, I’ve been earlier doing mainly largescale bioenergy R&Dprojects in e.g. VTT and my own enterprise. I had a good luck of having nice and enthusiastic people around me in the “bioenergy boom” in 1990s and 2000s.

In the recent years I’ve been working with different kind of energy efficiency and systemlevel balance optimization issues. As an important part of the personal view to the world, as a hobby I have a museum-oriented hobbies like buses from 70s and 80s. Also walking, cycling and photography, as a way of being thankful to the diversity in the world, are very important to me.”