New Industrial Chair at ITM Atlantic

IMT Atlantique announces the creation of a new industrial chair dedicated to the design, deployment and operation of the energy networks of the future.

 

Ahe ValaDoE (VALeur Ajoutée Données et Energie) chair is being conducted in partnership with the Pays de la Loire Region, Nantes Métropole, Enedis (1), Mines Saint-Étienne and Telecom Paris Tech. IMT Atlantique, which has just been ranked first in France in the "Industry and Innovation" field in the Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings 2019 (2), is contributing its expertise in the fields of energy and digital technology to this programme based on a multidisciplinary approach and collaboration between the energy industry and local authorities. The ValaDoE Chair should enable the emergence of innovative solutions taking full advantage of this convergence for the energy transition and their associated energy networks for the benefit of territories and citizens..

 

The challenges of the energy transition make it necessary to rethink energy management and to develop decentralised distribution methods based on the balance between supply and demand expressed at the different levels of territories (blocks, districts, communes, inter-communalities, departments, regions). The transformation of data into information likely to circulate between the different actors is a major challenge. In order to succeed in the transformation towards multi-energy, intelligent and flexible networks, the ValaDoE Chair brings together the entire chain of stakeholders concerned - industrialists and local authorities - as well as academic players covering all the disciplines involved: Internet of Things, energy networks, data protection and data science analysis.

 

A multidisciplinary and multi-actor approach

One of the challenges of the program is to identify and remove the locks that can slow down the implementation of these new networks. The sharing and circulation of information between players with sometimes divergent interests - fleet managers, local authorities, industrialists, energy producers, distributors - should be encouraged without compromising the quality, confidentiality and security of data. In addition to the multi-actor dimension of the issues addressed, the multi-disciplinary nature of the problems addressed is also important. Each of the academic partners thus brings its expertise in its areas of competence.

IMT Atlantique is putting forward its know-how in the fields of communicating objects, the Internet of the future, cyber security, decision support, multi-criteria and multi-actor analysis, simulation and optimisation of energy systems and networks.

For its part, Mines Saint-Etienne benefits from recognised expertise in the fields of mathematics for decision support, information technology and intelligent systems, and the performance of production systems and territories. Finally, Telecom Paris Tech has established itself as a reference contact for the Internet of Things and cybersecurity for electrical systems, supply-demand balances and decentralized management of energy markets, particularly with regard to the establishment of local electricity markets.

 

The three schools rely on cutting-edge research, through their own laboratories and joint research units in partnership with the CNRS (INSIS and INS2I), INRIA and universities and engineering schools (GEPEA, IRISA, LABSTICC, LIMOS and LTCI). The Chair aims to regularly integrate new study subjects and economic and academic partners.

 

In particular, the Pays de la Loire Region is supporting the chair to co-finance a thesis and investments and is contributing its expertise as Climate Air Energy leader through its roadmap on energy transition and its regional policy for higher education and research.

 

In February 2018, Nantes Métropole adopted the shared roadmap for energy transition. This roadmap reflects the ambition of the metropolis to become a European reference metropolis for the energy transition through the scope that these projects will have on regional planning, in the daily lives of metropolitan residents and the collective dynamics between actors that they involve. One of the axes retained in this roadmap is to use digital levers to support energy transition projects.

 

The scope of the Chair covers a very large number of issues and multiple themes

An initial series of brainstorming meetings identified seven working themes, including the maximisation of local flows on multi-energy distribution networks, territorial planning and decentralised energy management, local interaction between networks and the study of the financial and economic mechanisms of energy exchanges. To date, three first thesis topics have been defined:

 

The ValaDoE Chair is SMILE approved (https://smile-smartgrids.fr/), which aims to deploy and demonstrate French know-how in terms of smart energy networks (electricity, gas, heat, hydrogen). Winner of a national call for projects in 2016, SMILE is an association of 243 members, both public and private (digital and energy companies, research centres, departmental energy unions, local authorities and network managers). The association supports and accompanies technological demonstration projects in order to bring national, European and international visibility.

Source : ITM Atlantic

 

(1) Enedis is a public utility company, operator of the electricity distribution network. It develops, operates and modernises the electricity network and manages the associated data. It carries out customer connections, round-the-clock troubleshooting, meter reading and all technical interventions. It is independent of the energy suppliers who are responsible for the sale and management of the electricity supply contract.