SEAM4US

Sustainable Energy Management for Underground Stations

(duration: 10/2011 – 10/2014 /// funding: CORDIS FP7 – Energy-Efficient Buildings)

In large metropoles such as London or Delhi, the underground transportation system is the biggest  energy consumer of the city, using as much electricity as 250,000 households. Over 30% of this energy is used by lighting, ventilation, climate control, security, information and communication, ticketing, and signalling systems in and around the underground stations.

Although energy efficiency is internationally high on the political agenda, little is known about day-to-day energy consumption in these massive transportation hubs.

Through empirical modelling of energy consumption and designing distributed control mechanisms for the metro station, the SEAM4US project is expected to reduce energy consumption by 5% - 10%. The Barcelona metro system will be used as a live test grounds.

User and environmental modelling and control

The SEAM4US project proposes several steps towards reducing energy consumption. First, analysis will point out which systems are wasting energy under real-world conditions. Energy consumption by these systems will be empirically modelled during and off peak hours and under different daily and seasonal weather conditions.

In order to increase energy savings for such systems, users are encouraged to use the station in an energy-saving way. During off-peak hours, passengers could for instance be guided towards the main areas, so that in the auxiliary areas the lights can be dimmed, or elevators and ticket machines shut down. Of course, these areas must be monitored for increased use, so passenger occupancy and flow models have to be acquired.

Another way to improve energy efficiency in the station's systems, for example for ventilation,  is exploiting external factors, such as outside temperature, wind or air flow from moving trains. These form renewable energy sources, which make overall climate and air quality operations cheap and low-power. In order to take full advantage of such factors, they must be predicted by empirical models, and a sensor-actuator network must be in place to open or close doors and windows.

Almende activities

The project partners focus on the empirical modelling of energy management in metro-stations and their surroundings by applying building and environmental physics, user/group and business modelling techniques. They will develop a monitoring grid, deployable in public spaces and integrated with the Hydra middleware platform.

In order to optimize the use of energy by the metro station systems, Almende develops a distributed multi-agent control system that is aware of the passenger occupancy and flow levels and of the environmental conditions.

Links

SEAM4US project website