Open Thor Living Lab

DESCRIPTION

Open Thor Living Lab is a former coal mining site that has been converted into a sustainable research and business park, focusing on sustainable energy and smart manufacturing.

Recently, Open Thor Living Lab has been recognised as the first regulatory sandbox for energy in Flanders. This, together with the presence of the EnergyVille research institute using Thor as a living lab, makes it an ideal environment for experiments on energy communities.

Currently the site hosts 6 buildings equipped with state-of-art heating, cooling, automation and energy monitoring systems. In total 55 charging points for electric vehicles are present. EnergyVille connects these individual systems to the SmarThor cloud platform. New buildings on site will be gradually added.

The current experiments use the flexibility of the charging points to optimize the energy profiles of buildings. More experiments will be launched in the near future.

AREAS OF SPECIAL COMPETENCE

Technologies like smart charging points, heat pumps, PV, batteries are integrated.

Experiments focus on flexibility harvesting, abstraction and utilization for various business cases and optimization strategies applied to new market concept.

WHAT CAN BE TESTED

Integration of new systems, services and control strategies to improve the integration of renewables.

In lab environment: battery testing, district heating/cooling, DC solutions, grid emulations, building energy management systems.

AVAILABLE INFRASTRUCTURE

Azure cloud integration, AC medium voltage grid, DC grid EV1-EV2, charging points, battery testing lab, individual heating & cooling systems, district heating model.

T2 Campus offers technology training for professionals and retraining.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH US

Visit the Open Thor Living Lab website https://www.openthor.be/en and contact us via the contact module.

PRICING MODEL

There are different possibilities varying from co-funded projects like H2020, Interreg, Flux50 over bilateral or multilateral contract research, etc.

Contact us at openthor@energyville.be or use the contact module on the Open Thor Living lab website https://www.openthor.be/en