ECOWET

Clean and sustainable water supplies and low carbon energy access are the essential infrastructures/building blocks for economies, health and quality of life in sustainable smart cities. Coupling of cross commodity infrastructure and integration of energy storage is a challenge for smart cities. This project envisions a smart city infrastructure with efficient water and energy distribution networks in a distributed manner. The project involves development of hardware and software platforms to improve energy efficiency and water management, integration of on-site distributed clean energy resources and energy storage devices for better network efficiency and reduced carbon footprint.

Expected results and outcomes of the project:

• Improvement in the existing hardware-software capability to connect, control and efficiently manage water/energy infrastructure in scalable and Plug-and-Play manner.
• The proposed technological platform - comprising a set of common knowledge, theoretical approaches, mathematical models and decision support via optimization and analytical tools - that will contribute in making possible the promising environmentally sustainable smart city.
• Optimization of existing energy storage technologies including machine learning and distributed energy management suitable for targeted problem domain.
• Advanced technology transfer and knowledge sharing among the international group.

The main goal of the project is the energy-efficient management of electricity and water by complementing both critical resources (energy and water infrastructures) in the smart sustainable cities. The core scientific research is on enhancing the overall efficiency by coupling of these most essential infrastructures through advanced ICT and intelligent computational framework.

Major Tasks:

• The integration of advanced energy storage technology and renewable energy sources to enable the coupling and modularization of electricity and water infrastructures.
• Hardware and software platform to improve energy efficiency and water management. A software platform that allows real-time monitoring, analysis and controlling based on the IEC 61499 industrial standard with the grounding of systems engineering techniques.
• Optimization techniques for energy-efficient management of both water and electricity in the purview of the infrastructural constraints in the smart sustainable cities.

German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Indo German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC)

01.02.2018 - 31.01.2021