Energy systems
BACKGROUND
For the past 30 years, the Energy group of the University of Geneva has been conducting interdisciplinary research in energy systems from a perspective of demand management, improved energy efficiency and integration of renewable energies.
STRUCTURE
The Energy group is part of the Department F.-A. Forel for environmental and aquatic sciences, Faculty of science, of the University of Geneva. It is also affiliated to the Institute of environmental sciences, where it takes an active part in teaching for the Master program in environmental sciences.
DRIVING FORCES
The specificity of the Energy group is a problem-based approach founded on the experience gained from innovative projects and programs. During the last 30 years, it has acquired and developed a corpus of knowledge on energy practices and realities. The Energy group academics and researchers come from a wide range of fields such as physics, environmental sciences, econometrics, political science and architecture.
RESEARCH ORIENTATIONS
- Evaluation of innovating energy systems, mainly related to the valorization of renewable energies for thermal services (cooling/heating).
- Description of synergies and conflicts between components of the system, with an aim of supporting the emergence of intelligent and reproducible solutions.
- Integration of the economic and organisational aspects.
Energy, territory and thermal networks
- Study of regional energy systems and their territorial challenges (energy indicators, technico-economic constraints of the sectors, actors logic).
- Opportunities and constraints related to the thermal infrastructures for a territorial coherence analysis, from the point of view of the 2000W Society.
Energy efficiency and control of the request
- Modeling of the energy demand and evaluation of the savings induced by incentive campaigns, in particular in the field of electricity.
- Technico-economic experience feedbacks in the field of buildongs renovation (approaches top-down and bottom-up).
Solar: resource and transformers
- Since 1978, continuous acquisition of weather data in urban, semi-urban and rural environment in the canton of Geneva.
- Development, analyzes and validation of various parameters evaluation models of evaluation of the solar radiation in order to improve knowledge of the spatial and temporal resource.