Future Urban Energy System for Buildings: The Pathway Towards Flexibility, Resilience and Optimization

This book investigates three main characteristics of future urban energy system for buildings, including flexibility, resilience and optimization. It explores the energy flexibility by considering renewable energy integration with buildings, sector coupling, and energy trading in the local energy market. Energy resilience is addressed from aspects of future climate change, pandemic crisis, and operational uncertainties. Approaches for system design, dynamic pricing and advanced control are discussed for the optimization of urban energy system. Knowledge from this book contributes to the effective means in future urban energy paradigm to closely integrate multiple energy systems (i.e., distribution, mobility, production and storage) with different energy carriers (i.e., heat, electricity) in an optimal manner for energy use. It would facilitate the envision of next-generation urban energy systems, towards sustainability, resilience and prosperity.

This book targets at a broad readership with specific experience and knowledge in energy system, transport, built environment and urban planning. As such, it will appeal to researchers, graduate students, engineers, consultants, urban scientists, investors and policymakers, with interests in energy flexibility, building/city resilience and climate neutrality.

Xingxing Zhang is a Professor in energy technology at Dalarna University, Sweden. He has multidisciplinary research experience, especially in energy systems, energy data analytics, adaption to future climate and urban building energy modelling for sustainable transition. He is leading the City Information Modelling (CIM) group at the university, which includes technical, economic and environmental analyses by interdisciplinary research methods from building physics, energy engineering, informatics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. He is active in EU, UK and China research networks, by working in Swedish national projects, Sweden-China joint project, Nordic research project, EU H2020/FP7 projects, EU cost action and IEA tasks. He has won the second place of ＂EU-China Dragon-star Innovation Prize＂ in 2015. He serves as Editor Board Member of two journals and Regular Reviewer for many international journals. He has an Accredited Professional Certificate of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED AP), and he is UK Chartered Engineer (CEng), Member of Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) and CIB Commission Member of W098 Intelligent and Responsive Buildings.

Pei Huang is an Assistant Professor in energy technology at Dalarna University, Sweden. He is active in research projects at both national level and international level, in Sweden, Hong Kong, and European level. He has experience in leading projects. His research interests include zero/positive energy building techniques, building-community-level control, electromobility, energy sharing techniques, district energy system, city information modelling, solar mobility, green transportation and decision-making under uncertainty. He is active in IEA Tasks. He has served as Guest Editor of Buildings. He is also Regular Reviewer for many international journals.

Yongjun Sun obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in thermal energy and power engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU) and refrigeration and cryogenics engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 2003 and 2006, respectively. Dr. Sun received his Ph.D. degree in building services engineering from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2010. Before he joined City University of Hong Kong, Dr. Sun was Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. Sun’s current research interests include urban decarbonization, zero energy buildings, complex system design and control, coordinated demand response and data centre immersion cooling.