SOLUTION Site Lapua
The SOLUTION city Lapua is located in the South Ostrobothnia region in western Finland and has a population of approximately 14 000 inhabitants. The total area of Lapua is 751 km², of which the core city area that incorporates all of the Lapua demonstration site measures about 40 km².
Before the SOLUTION project, the core centre of the city was already equipped with a district heating system and a bio-CHP-production; building automation system provided a central access to data for city-owned buildings.
The project activities focused on the construction of 18 new buildings and the refurbishment of 1 existing building – the Niittypuisto care home.
*The KPIs for the buildings are compared with the baseline of a reference building.
Overall a gross floor area of 5983 m² was newly constructed and the total refurbished area was 3174 m2. As a result of the energy efficiency, the total energy consumption was reduced from an average of 160 kWh/m²/yr (business as usual) to 80 kWh/m²/yr for the renovated building, representing a decrease of 50 % in comparison to the reference building.
The total energy demand of the new buildings was calculated to be 38 kWh/m²/yr, while the figure for the reference building exceeded 60 kWh/m²/yr. This resulted in 479 MWh/yr of final energy savings for the new buildings based on the design data. With regard to the monitoring data, no savings were achieved at Niittypuisto as the occupation level and the functional status of some areas within the building changed significantly after the refurbishment. At the request of the project, this building’s detailed data is not included in the present publication.
With regards to the refurbished buildings, the primary energy savings increase to 850 MWh/yr, while the CO2 reduction amounts to 395 tonnes per year.
Challenges
Country |
Description |
|---|---|
| Finland |
Fossil fuels are still used for district heating, which negatively affects the CO2 emission balance within the project. This is something the team cannot influence but it does affect the project’s results. |
| Finland |
One of the demo sites, Ritamaki School, was dropped from the project in 2013 because achieving the requirements for this renovation would not have been economically feasible. As a result the school did not go through the renovation plans that were set to increase energy efficiency, apart from connecting the school to the district heating network.1 |
The following interventions were implemented in the new buildings in Lapua as part of the SOLUTION project:
Energy efficiency in buildings
- Heat pumps
Energy systems integration
- District heating
- Thermal collectors
- Heat from the system will be used for domestic hot water and an underfloor heating system, while excess heat will be fed to the small-scale district heating network.
- Geothermal cooling
- Cogeneration
- Wind power
- Heat pump
- Building energy management system (BEMS):
- There is a remote control for the energy management system, which monitors and analyses energy consumption, and controls the lighting and HVAC systems.
According to the design data, the annual cost savings for energy total EUR 621 354. Based on the poor financial data and lack of investment costs in the deliverables, the payback calculation is not possible.
Energy saving actions, (including optimisation of the behaviour) in the buildings and new local district heating supplied by biogas polygeneration, bio-boilers, heat pumps, wind power, and effective energy management and remote control system are planned to fulfil the energy requirements in order to reach a share of 75 % of self-sufficiency until 2015.
The Lapua city encompasses a wide countryside and uses the surrounding farming areas and forest biomass. In addition to forest biomass, a lot of bio-waste will be used as energy sources. This will contribute to a significant decrease of CO2 emissions.
A wind farm close to the city is planned and the first wind turbine of this farm will be demonstrated in the SOLUTION project. The integration of intelligent solutions through research in supply and demand side management will allow an optimisation of the energy production.
- Estimated population involved: 14.000
- Approx. geographical area coverage: 751 km2
- Approx. energy saving: 35 %
- Approx. energy from RES: 75 %