Belgium

• Antwerp
• Genk
• Ghent
• Hasselt
• Kobbegem
• Oud-Heverlee
• Zellik

The Belgium pilot of the InterConnect project is divided in eight different sites, located in seven cities – Antwerp, Genk, Ghent, Hasselt, Kobbegem, Oud-Heverlee and Zellik. Different partners will be managing the eight demos to achieve specific objectives. The general objectives of the Belgium pilot are:

• Demonstrate the added value of a common ontology in 8 complementary set-ups.
• Integrate energy and non-energy services and evaluate the added value for the stakeholders.
• Implement and demonstrate future business model such as P2P exchange and dynamic tariffs (also for heat) in local energy communities.
• Demonstrate the value of integrating bidirectional charging infrastructure and household appliances inside the micro-gird.

• Includes multi-energy industrial and residential sites.
• Interacts with one of Flanders’s largest cooperation projects on energy systems which includes the DSO, all Flemish research institutes and 25 of Flanders’ most active companies in the energy sector and backed up with support of the Flemish Energy Agency and the Regulator for the gas and electricity market.

The Belgium pilot includes the following technologies and infrastructures:

• 140 households with electric boilers, heat pumps and/or electric heating and 20 buildings.
• A mix of commercial-educational and residential functions in a single building to deep retrofit with different communication technologies on site.
• Small-scale public buildings and local energy community with direct electric resistance heating.
• New Nearly Zero Energy Buildings development with 200 new connections in the timeline of InterConnect, district heating & cooling with ice storage, heat pumps, PV, and electrical storage.
• Industrial energy community with partially existing and partially new buildings, new district heating networks and solar park, including battery storage.
• Advanced algorithm with AI and P2P designed in matching funding Flemish project context.
• Science park EV charging set up with 1.3 MW of EV chargers.
• SAREF-compliant appliances, heat pumps and smart chargers.
• Energy management systems at building & neighbourhood levels as well as interacting with the grid.
• P2P services and standardized interface with the distribution network.

IDLab-imec is participating in the H2020 Interconnect project in multiple ways. Our team is responsible of the follow-up of some pilots together with the pre-testing phase of some new technologies and products in the HomeLab. The HomeLab is a unique residential test and co-innovation environment for smart home services. It is both a lab and a real two-story house in which people can live temporarily to test and co-create IoT & AI services. In this lab, appliances like the Daikin heat pump are pretested in terms of functionality, communication with the knowledge engine and interconnectivity, before being installed in the pilots spread over different countries in Europe.