A mixed biomass and gas network for 5,000 residents in Valladolid

On February 27 and 28, Veolia presented the energy efficiency project developed in the community of residents of the Torrelago urbanization, in Laguna de Duero, Valladolid, and which has resulted in a 40% reduction in energy demand of 31 buildings.

This initiative is framed within the Cityfied Project, coordinated by the Cartif Technology Center, which is partner Veolia, and is financed by the VII Framework Program of the EurOpea Union launched in 2013. Cityfied also includes actions in energy efficiency in the residential areas of Lund (Sweden) and Soma (Turkey). With all of them, it is intended to value the creation of innovative and replicable solutions on a large scale in other eurOPEAS cities for the development of more efficient and more efficient urban districts and nuclei more environmentally respectful.

The presentation of the Duero Laguna project has been developed in a meeting in which the project partners have participated, who have joined representatives of the 40 followers of Cityfied in EurOPA. All of them have carried out several workshop activities and have attended different presentations on the project during the two days of the activity. Thus, they have been able to study closely the results obtained in the demonstrating projects - Laguna de Duero, Soma and Lund - and then replicate them in their neighborhoods and districts. To this end, they have also visited the energy facilities of the communities of owners of Torrelago Phase 1 and Torrelago Phase 2 to see more closely the improvement activities carried out by Veolia.

This is a total of 1,488 homes and 5,000 neighbors for which the company has developed a mixed network that combines biomass combustion and an alternative gas installation, in addition to other works to improve and optimize energy expenditure. For this project, Veolia has made an investment of 2.5 million eur.

The main objective of Veolia's action has been to reduce the energy cost of homes, whose buildings were old, were not properly insulated and, by extension, had high energy consumption. To this end, the company has built an energy facility made up of a single network, divided into three subnetworks, with three biomass boilers and four gas boilers. With them, CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are reduced while maintaining security of supply.

Following the maximum of energy efficiency, Veolia's work has also been focused on reducing the energy demand of homes, renewing distribution systems and energy management. On the other hand, the Environmental Research and Engineering Institute, 3ia, was in charge of developing a new enveloping for buildings that improve its isolation and comfort conditions, with an investment of 14 million eur. All these actions have meant the reduction by 40% of the total energy demand, which, being customizable, meets the needs of all neighbors independently.