Demo 3 — Croatia
Advancing the energy transition on the Island of Krk
Grid-supporting renewable districts on a holiday island with large seasonal demand variation
Domain
Electricity, Water
Partners involved
- Smart Island Krk
- Grid ONE
- University of Zagreb
The Croatian demo will take place in the Island of Krk, a trailblazer in energy transition. Krk has been an official zero-emission island since 2012 and was recognized as one of the ten EU clean energy good practices islands in the Energy Transition in 2020. As Krk is driven by strong seasonality and a part-time building fleet, this demonstrator focuses on ensuring energy transition benefits all the community, establishing new business models for local stakeholders and assisting them in activating their buildings in a democratic and inclusive manner.
Krk faces unique challenges with strong demand seasonality. The island has ~20,000 full-time inhabitants and, during the summer season, it registers +70,000 tourists, which stresses the energy system. The island’s existing building fleet, characterized by diverse performances and smart readiness, hinders owners’ investments in green technologies.
Through this demo, the Island of Krk is poised to establish new business models and democratize building activation and interoperability towards a scalable, affordable, secure and future-proof technological data -intensive transition of buildings into efficient grid-interactive assets.
- Target all types of building usage and tiers and generate heterogeneous energy building models;
- Improve smart readiness and performance, addressing the diversity of the island’s existing building fleet;
- Increase the collection of ambient and consumption data;
- Encourage building owners’ participation in new business models through enhanced data acquisition;
- Contribute to energy poverty eradication by ensuring the benefits of the energy transition reach all building owners;
- Activate buildings empty for the most part of the year, fostering community-level benefits.
- Multi-energy buildings owned and operated by the Ponikve municipal utility company group;
- Consumer level ambient and consumption data;
- Historical consumption data retrieved from official DSO meters;
- Meteorological measurement data from SIK-owned local station;
- 3 rooftop PV power plants (138 kW, 80 kW and 40 kW);
- Network of e-mobility chargers for cars and bicycles;
- Public lighting data from LED repowered illumination;
- Water consumption and distribution data;
- Software and hardware infrastructure for modeling the island’s dataset;
- Statistical modeling of lighthouse users’ data;
- Algorithmic tools for optimal energy system operation.
- Implement a stratified building-to-grid integration strategy for highly seasonal/diverse building portfolios;
- Overcome the interoperability and data modeling challenges with a cost-effective and standards-compliant technological stack;
- Design additional services to be offered by the building owners and remunerated by the operator;
- Collect inputs for capex-sensitive energy network upgrade strategies;
- Minimize capex expenses that have to be carried by the community;
- Pave the way for new business models for the local municipal utility company.
