The energy-efficient Charlottenburg university campus, which has been developed by the Technische Universität Berlin and the University of the Arts, is being developed in the centre of Berlin. An energy efficiency master plan is aimed at establishing an innovative heating management system via an integrated energy network. The goal is to achieve an energy-efficient and economic optimum by means of energy savings, local generation of renewable energies and energy storage. The campus will serve as a model for district refurbishments and is set to achieve the national climate protection targets as a learning and testing laboratory by 2025.

Despite the introduction of active energy management, the final energy demand for the Berlin-Charlottenburg university campus (HCBC) amounted to about 100 GWh in 2011. This equates to a primary energy requirement of approximately 140 GWh p.a. for the existing plant technologies. Whilst 30% of the final energy for the electricity already comes from renewable sources, this is by no means the case with the heating. The aim of the project is therefore to combine proven technologies to enable an economically and energy-efficiently optimised interplay of energy saving, renewable energy generation, storage, distribution and utilisation to achieve the “Wärmewende” – the “heat transition” – on the campus. The backlog of refurbishment required at the HCBC site amounts to 300 million euros. In the coming years, it is intended to reduce this in a sensible manner based on the energy master plan and its holistic concept. The research project is predominantly a realisation measure with a preceding analysis and conceptual phase (2016-2018). In addition, recommendations for action are being developed to enable the results to be transferred to other urban areas.

© Projekt EnEff: HCBC

Schedule and project phases © Projekt EnEff: HCBC | Schedule and project phases

Research focus

The aim of the project is to achieve an economically and energy-efficiently optimised combination of energy savings through energy-efficient building refurbishment and the local generation of renewable energy. By means of an integrated energy network, the energy within the campus shall be distributed sensibly on this basis. The decisive feature here is the shifting of the thermal energy balance limit from the buildings to the district. A major focus is on generating energy locally where favourable conditions prevail, as well as on the subsequent shifting of the heat energy flows. This will create a new kind of heating network that gathers and utilises heat beyond the confines of the buildings. In order to shift and store the energy it is planned to use and, if necessary, expand the almost self-sufficient district heating network available on the campus. Superordinate district energy management will ensure an optimised energy flow beyond the building confines during operation. In addition to technologies already available in the market, advanced technologies developed at the TU Berlin and other scientific institutions will also be integrated.

District concept and urban development

The goal is not to renovate building after building according to the EnEV standard – as would normally be the case. This would not be financially feasible for the campus as a whole. For this reason it is planned to expand the balancing limit: The entire campus will be considered as a unit and measures such as the partial renovation of buildings and systems technology, renewable production of energy on the campus, utilisation of waste heat, storage and redistribution will be sensibly harmonised with one another by an internal campus heating network.

With new-build schemes and previously planned comprehensive building renovations, it shall be ensured that the heating systems are conceived for low temperatures to enable renewable energies and waste heat to be used more effectively. Since the research project is primarily intended to serve the implementation of the energy-efficient campus, the executive and building management of the two participating universities are already being closely involved during the concept development.

Economic feasibility

All individual measures shall be valued in terms of the costs and bundled into packages of measures. These shall in turn be combined into economically and energy-efficiently optimised concept proposals for different scenarios.

Results and practical transfer of the project "EnEff:HCBC University Campus Berlin - Charlottenburg" (FKZ 03ET1354A and B)

High energy saving potentials were identified on the Berlin-Charlottenburg campus, both in the building and in the plant sector. At the same time, potentials for using environmental energies were found, especially in the area of solar energy and previously unused waste heat, and heating and cooling networks for shifting thermal energies were investigated. This resulted in a catalogue of measures. The measures described there were compared in terms of their economic and energetic efficiency using a software tool developed for this purpose. By combining and prioritising the most efficient measures, an energy roadmap for the campus was created. With its help, it is possible to distribute investments in such a way that they result in maximum primary energy savings at minimum investment costs. This can be realised much more quickly and cheaply than using conventional methods. In the case of the latter, only a very cost- and time-intensive building-by-building energy refurbishment according to EnEV standards would be possible.

It is important to note that the measures identified in this project cannot yet achieve a 100% CO2 neutral campus. Even the maximum achievable 80% can only be reached if cross-building, innovative measures are included. In order to achieve the goal of 100% conventional primary energy savings, it is necessary to further develop the cross-building, innovative measures. These include alternative envelope renovations for buildings. In the case of systems, it must be possible to better integrate and use environmental energies. This includes, for example, the further development of heat pump and storage technologies as well as an innovative distribution of heat through so-called multi-conductor heat networks. These enable the use of thermal energy across buildings by utilising different temperature levels.

In the next project phases, the innovative measure-based planning method will be tested. In the next ten years, primary energy savings/substitutions are to be realised on the entire campus, initially amounting to 40 %. By 2035, the aim is to achieve a heat transition target of 65%.

Secondly, parallel to the renovation measures, a demonstrator is to be created in which the cross-building use of renewable energies and waste heat is to be tested and optimised via a multi-conductor heat network paired with short- and long-term storage. Another elementary goal of the research project is to develop recommendations for action from the results of the EnEff:HCBC project that can be transferred to other urban areas.