The Works in Ebbw Vale is a redevelopment project aimed at revitalizing the 78-hectare former steelworks site and its surrounding areas. The project involves transforming the industrial landscape into a modern business park and community hub.

Our project involves minimising energy and carbon emissions from the following buildings:

• Secondary School

• Learning Campus

• Victorian age General Offices

• Leisure Centre

We are doing this by building from Cardiff University’s original research (see video) that created 20% energy savings and 43% carbon emissions reductions during the pilot phase.

Buildings are intricate systems influenced by various dynamic factors, necessitating a shift from passive to active management for improved energy performance. This transition must consider environmental, behavioural, economic, technical, and performance optimisation aspects to achieve energy efficiency and long-term sustainability. Current building management systems excel at creating and managing information but lack the ability to learn and adapt to performance objectives.

To optimise the buildings at Ebbw Vale, we are federating AI surrogates using semantic energy optimisation capabilities driven by collaborative learning and adaptable AI tailored to the built environment parameters. Our objective is to develop an energy optimisation system with calibration abilities based on IoT sensor data, narrowing the prevalent energy performance gap and charting pathways towards achieving net-zero targets.

Research papers

Li, Y., Rezgui, Y. and Kubicki, S. 2020. An intelligent semantic system for real-time demand response management of a thermal grid. Sustainable Cities and Society 52, article number: 101857, DOI: 10.1016/j.scs.2019.101857

Jayan, Mr Bejay, et al. 2016. An analytical optimization model for holistic multiobjective district energy management—A case study approach. International Journal of Modelling and Optimization 6.3, 156-165, DOI: 10.7763/IJMO.2016.V6.521