Participants
- Functional Unit “Automation, Robotics and Mechatronics” (TEP 197)
- CIESOL
- Heat Systems
- Functional Unit “Solar Energy Resources, Climatology, Physics Of The Atmosphere” (TEP 165)
Contacts
- José Domingo Álvarez Hervás (jhervas@ual.es)
- Joaquín Blas Alonso Montesinos (joaquin.alonso@ual.es)
Funds:
UAl Transfiere
Current Situation:
In progress
Summary
The Solar Energy Research Centre (CIESOL) is a research centre shared between the University of Almeria (UAL) and the Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research – Solar Platform of Almeria (CIEMAT-PSA). It is divided into six functional units and has infrastructures related to the use of solar energy that allow, at pilot plant level, the characterisation, optimisation and design of systems in different areas of solar energy use (oriented towards the productive environment), as well as the development of experiments in the following areas: operation and control of solar thermal plants, energy efficiency and use of solar energy in micro-energy grids through IoT technologies, analysis and optimisation of natural and solar conditioning processes, improvement of comfort conditions in buildings, use of solar energy in desalination processes, water regeneration, biomass production through microalgae, energy generation (electricity and process heat/cooling) for use in agriculture and efficient energy management of electric vehicles. These scientific infrastructures, consolidated in recent years through the centre’s participation in national and international projects, require specialised maintenance due to the diversity and complexity of the elements that make them up.
Furthermore, the implementation of the experiments in the aforementioned areas requires the assistance of technical staff with expertise in solar energy, automation, industrial computing and control engineering, design of experiments, modelling, simulation and optimisation, as well as prototype design, in order to, among other tasks, optimise the resources and capacities offered by the centre, exploit and extend the monitoring systems and intercommunicate the existing software and hardware systems. This project proposes the application of new digital technologies to reduce the energy consumption of buildings and thus drive their carbon footprint towards zero. This digital transition will be achieved through IoT and machine learning algorithms and will be tested in an existing bioclimatic building, the CIESOL research centre. This will require: i) managing energy efficiency and comfort control within the building through the production and management of the cooling/heating installation and decarbonisation through thermal production systems for climate and DHW based on heat pump and photovoltaic solar energy, ii) the design and optimisation of cooling and solar heating plants by contributing to the design and management of hydraulic and thermal production systems, (iii) the design and optimisation of cooling and heating systems using groundwater and geothermal heat exchangers.