DTU Compute receives the largest grant in 2013 from the Danish Council for Strategic Research Council of DKK 44 million. The funding will go towards the CITIES centre (Centre for IT-Intelligent Energy Systems in Cities), which will be headed by Professor Henrik Madsen.
CITIES will create IT solutions for the analysis, operation and development of integrated energy systems (electricity, gas, district heating and biomass) in cities.
The centre focus is based on the opportunities provided by urban environments as well as the potential synergies with many existing green/smart cities projects.
By virtue of their population density and well-established energy networks, cities offer a good scope for high flexibility in the energy system and also account for 80 per cent of the global energy consumption and carbon emissions. Linking energy systems together produces a number of advantages, e.g. the possibility to achieve lossless energy storage (virtual storage) from minutes to several months.
CITIES will both be conducting research into long-term planning models and operational solutions for the integration of increasing volumes of renewable energy.
The centre will bring together researchers from DTU, Aalborg University and a number of foreign universities (Korea, USA, Ireland, Austria, Spain and Germany) and also includes a large number of Danish and foreign companies and sector organizations.