The City of Mechelen has long been committed to the transition to a climate-neutral city. The electrification of mobility also plays an important role in this. The new urban peripheral parking lot Keerdok offered the opportunity to develop a completely new vision, with maximum use of renewable energy and the application of energy storage via 'vehicle-to-grid'. But the practical implementation raised many questions. Ingenium assisted the city council with both strategic and technical advice.
Europe is moving towards more sustainable, decentralized and digital energy networks. The City of Mechelen also wants to respond to this transition and coordinate the generation and storage of renewable energy locally. In doing so, however, the stability of the public electricity grid must not be compromised. With Parking Keerdok, the city is participating in the European Interreg project ACCESS: Advancing Communities towards low-Carbon Energy Smart Systems.
Parking Keerdok is located along the N16 and houses, in addition to 516 public parking spaces for cars and ample bicycle parking, the offices for Voka Mechelen-Kempen and a Louis Delhaize supermarket, among others. The building is a model of sustainability, with geothermal energy for space heating and a rooftop PV installation of 170 kW peak (equivalent to the power consumption of about 50 Mechelen families).... To charge vehicles, 20 AC connection points at 11 kW, 4 DC charging points at 200 kW and 2 vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging points have been installed.
With V2G, (part of) the energy from the battery of electric cars is returned to other users in the building. This is applied to the Partago and Klimaan CVSO shared cars, because they have to be reserved in advance and so there is visibility of the periods when they will and will not effectively be used.
Moreover, this project also applies energy sharing between the various "occupants" of the building. The PV installation is electrically connected via different partial installations to the different building users, namely Louis Delhaize, VOKA and charging station operator Energetix. If one party has more electricity available than needed, it can share that surplus with other users in the building.
The building can thus use electricity from various sources: renewable energy via the PV installation, recovery of energy from already charged (partial) cars or purchase from the public electricity grid. Operator Energetix itself has a dynamic energy contract for the latter (where the purchase price changes on an hourly basis).
In order to always make the most advantageous choice (in terms of both sustainability and economy) in all - and constantly changing - circumstances, a high-performance energy management system is necessary. For example, cars at the charging stations will automatically charge tráger when energy from the sun and wind is not available, or V2G is applied when many other cars need to be charged. For example, energy sharing can come in handy when Voka's offices are closed at the weekend but many shoppers want to charge their cars in the parking lot...,
The City of Mechelen may already have considerable climate ambitions, but mastering and managing such energy innovations itself is certainly not a core task of a local government. On the contrary, its complexity raised many questions:
Based on the outlines set out by the City of Mechelen, Ingenium drew up a philosophy that was feasible and affordable. We also worked out a future vision for smart charging, with a revenue model. Of course, we also paid attention to drawing up balanced contracts with suppliers, by asking the right questions to be able to make correct estimates,
Ingenium was also responsible for the elaboration of the technical concept, where slím charging was a must. This yields profits in several areas:
With Parking Keerdok, Mechelen is taking the lead in developing smart mobility solutions as part of the transition to a climate-neutral city. The various benefits of this approach can undoubtedly inspire and motivate many other decision makers as well.
Are you as a local authority, project developer, company or private investor also making plans to build large-scale parking infrastructure with charging facilities and possibly combine it with other users? Contact our expert Hannes Stubbe: hannes.stubbe@ingenium.be - 050 40 45 30.
