Faced with an urgent need to tackle climate change and rising energy prices—the outlook for gas and electricity prices in 2023 remains very high—local and regional authorities, along with their associations, must take immediate and lasting action to combat climate change and reduce their energy consumption.
How can IoT enhance the energy efficiency of smart cities? What are the levers for action to achieve energy sobriety in these areas? What paths should be taken?
Summary
- Sobriety: a 10% reduction in energy consumption energy consumption
- The Government's recommandations
- Drinking water: IoT to combat leaks
- The IoT: a key factor in energy efficiency in intelligent territories
Against a backdrop of accelerating climate change and conflict in Ukraine, France's energy transition is more of a priority than ever. France must move away from its dependence on fossil fuels and reduce its energy consumption by 40% by 2050. This means transforming our habits and behavior over the long term. This is the aim of the energy sobriety plan presented by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, and the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, on 6 October 2022.
The plan sets a target of reducing energy consumption by 10% by 2024. To achieve this target, the plan calls for a general mobilization. The State, businesses, local authorities, and the general public will all have to play their part. In addition to the commitments common to all sectors, such as reducing energy consumption in buildings and adopting more energy-efficient mobility, some are specific to each sector. These include the commitments made by local and regional authorities. The plan specifies that the mobilization also concerns medium-sized towns, départements and rural areas.
Three main measures need to be implemented by local and regional authorities. For each of them, the IoT can help to take energy efficiency further :
On average, public lighting accounts for 30% of a local authority's electricity costs. Local authorities will have to adopt good practices when it comes to public lighting. In particular, they will have to adjust lighting according to outdoor light intensity and strictly apply the ban on night-time lighting of advertising (between 1 am and 6 am).
Why not combine these good practices with a smart lighting approach, in particular through the transition to LED lighting and the integration of connected systems? The data collected by the sensors is fed back in real-time to an IoT data platform, which can be used to manage the street lighting directly from the platform, to alert users in the event of a sensor malfunction, or to identify pedestrians and vehicles.
Remote control of lighting points in real-time means that local authorities can ensure that public lighting is adapted to the needs of users and make substantial energy savings, reducing their electricity consumption by up to 67% in the first few months.
As part of the plan to reduce energy consumption, the Association Nationale des élus du Sport (National Association of Elected Sports Officials) recommends lowering the temperature in gymnasiums by 2°C and the water temperature in swimming pools by 1°C.
Deploying IoT sensors inside or outside buildings is also a good idea. These can be used to control the temperature in public buildings according to time of day, exposure, and needs, monitor energy consumption in real-time, and take swift action if necessary. More broadly, connected buildings also have uses associated with resource management (water, gas, electricity), air quality, natural ventilation, and even security in certain areas. These intelligent systems help to reduce maintenance and operating costs and enhance the quality of life for users.
This reduction could be achieved by regrouping public services in the most suitable premises.
Saint Gobain is a case in point. The company has put in place an optimized occupancy solution to manage the square meters it heats and thus reduce its energy bill.
With more than 875,000 km of drinking water network in France, some 26 million customers are served every year, according to the latest report from the Observatoire des services publics d'eau et d'assainissement (April 2021). An estimated 20% of drinking water is lost in France every year! In practical terms, leakage losses currently account for almost one billion cubic meters a year. The issue of detecting and managing leaks in our networks is therefore a major concern and one that has been exacerbated by the drought. This concerns municipalities, EPCIs, and syndicates that manage their networks, as well as their contractors.
In addition to the various traditional detection systems (acoustic and gas), there are now new IoT prevention systems, which have become essential with the development of remote management and hydraulic modeling. The integration of IoT solutions makes it possible to monitor water consumption (flow rate, flow speed, pressure, etc.), measure water levels, and detect leaks or malfunctions. A solution recently implemented by the Nevers agglomération (58) water authority. ‘We're looking to be even more responsive, based on a detailed history and analysis of the data’, explain Dominique Derangère, head of the water and sanitation department, and Fabrice Paccamiccio, head of the authority. According to them, ‘By improving the correlation between production and the network, we will be able to save time.
Other applications are also being targeted, including optimizing water consumption for green spaces, controlling remote watering systems and automatically triggering watering according to certain criteria (temperature, humidity, rainfall, etc.).
The technical building blocks of the Smart City, sensors collect data and transmit it to the analysis and decision-making center. There are as many types of sensors as there are physical quantities to be captured (light, presence, position, humidity, sound, vibration, electric current, magnetic field, presence or absence of a gas, flow, force, pressure, level, etc.).
Connectivity is therefore the foundation of the entire IoT (Internet of Things) architecture, without which nothing is possible. It enables the object to communicate with one or more networks, guaranteeing data feedback. On this point, the question of data interoperability is an essential point to consider.
The sensor can also provide information about its identity, position, or any anomalies it detects. It can also select the most relevant data in order to limit the number of data flows to be sent back. However, collecting all this data requires a suitable IoT platform.
This overall vision works in favor of energy sobriety in the region.
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