The energy hub concept applied to a case study of mixed residential and administrative buildings in Switzerland

The concept of Energy Hub (EH) is getting popular as a method to integrate non-dispatchable energy sources at building and neighbourhood scale with the support of energy storage and grid. It is interesting to study the effectiveness of EH concept to integrate solar energy and wind energy at both building and neighbourhood scale considering the real-time price and curtailments in the grid. This paper presents a case study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of EH in integrating solar energy in the SwissTech Convention Centre (STCC) and Quartier Nord on the EPFL campus in Lausanne considering both building and neighbourhood scale. The results depict that EH is more effective when both compared to standalone operation and grid integrated mode (considering grid curtailments and RTP) in the process of integration of renewable energy sources. Interacting with the grid seems to be more economical when compared to storage. Grid curtailments cause the storage to operate more frequently in both charging and discharging cycles.