Amsterdam Virtual Power Plant nominated for Green Digital Charter Award

Nominated for the European City's Green Digital Charter, Amsterdam's Virtual Power Plant has a total of around 50 households sharing energy from their home batteries. Since the summer of 2017, the solar energy has not been used immediately, stored in the battery of the home. This energy can be used at another time, or traded if energy prices are high. Conversely, energy can also be purchased and stored if the price is low. Finally, the battery can be used to balance the local grid. The virtual power plant is part of the City-zen project, coordinated by Alliander and Greenspread.

Bristol and Dublin are also nominated

In addition to Amsterdam, projects in Bristol and Dublin have been nominated. Smart charging of electric vehicles reduces peak consumption in Bristol. In Dublin, residents and sensors are working together to prevent air pollution on the cheap. The winning projects will be announced at the "Imagining the Future: Collaboration and Trust in Innovation" conference on January 23, 2018 in Brussels.

What is the Green Digital Charter?

The Green Digital Charter was launched by the European Community in 2009 in partnership with Manchester and Clicks & Links. The Charter is now backed by the European Commission and signed by 50 cities from 21 European countries, including Amsterdam. These cities have demonstrated their desire to meet the EU's climate goals through innovative digital solutions. Cities share best practices and results with each other, build local partnerships, and ensure digital innovation becomes part of city policy. Most importantly, each city should start 5 large-scale replicable ICT projects within 5 years and reduce the carbon footprint of the city's ICT industry by 30%.

What has happened in Amsterdam so far?

A large-scale initiative launched in Amsterdam is City-zen, a European-funded project in which 25 partners discovered in practice how the cities of Amsterdam and Grenoble can drastically reduce the use of fossils in the built environment energy situation. In addition to virtual power plants, homes are being renovated to reduce their energy use, cold drinks are drawn from drinking water mains, and river cruises supply local green energy.

Digital innovation is the focus of the City of Amsterdam and others. The city has now set up a CTO office to bring technology into the capillaries of its own organization. The collaboration of the Amsterdam Smart City parties focuses on implementing city-specific innovations. The innovative work of people in green IT makes the ICT industry more sustainable.This knowledge is shared with other cities through various European city conferences around this topic. Amsterdam also participates in the Smart City Technology Expert Group.

Reducing emissions from the ICT sector in Amsterdam is not yet a fait accompli. The capacity of the Amsterdam data center grew by 30% last year and it is now a second hub in Europe. An agreement was signed in 2013 to reduce energy consumption by 15%.

Prior to 2016, Amsterdam had been nominated for the Green Digital Charter Award, then Open Data – Smart Neighborhood Project.