Self-consumption community in the double sense
This project aims to contribute to increasing solar energy production, reducing overall energy consumption and the number of vehicles, and increasing the acceptance of renewable energy, e-vehicles and e-mobility sharing.
In three different pilot areas – a commercial area, a mixed-use area and a residential area – local businesses and residents are to cooperate both in the production and storage of solar energy (pooling for self-consumption) and in the use of electric vehicles (sharing, “Mobility as a Service”). This addresses two problems that are emerging in Switzerland and in Winterthur in the context of the Energy Strategy 2050: on the one hand, the sluggish expansion of solar energy and, on the other hand, the high density of fossil-fuelled motorised private transport.
The project is based on the cooperation of various partners from Winterthur from the fields of higher education/education, industry, structural and civil engineering and city administration. In particular, the areas are confronted with the issue of combining self-use and shared mobility. While the installation of a PV system including ZEV will soon be a matter of course in new buildings, e-vehicle sharing is still not very widespread here either. ZEV^2, on the other hand, starts with existing buildings and aims to design the optimal solution for mixed areas by combining technologies (metering infrastructure, energy management system, charging infrastructure – and the digital networking of these three systems) and needs (use, billing, transparency).
The project is being carried out by the City of Winterthur under the project management of the Climate Unit. The project is also financially supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy with the Front Runner programme.
Further information is available on request from the Smart City programme management.