Capgemini’s Smart Energy Services Supports Texel’s Energy Neutrality 2020 Goals

The Situation

Texel is a Dutch island in the North Sea with a population of about 14,000 and total area of over 460 square kilometers. The Municipality of Texel, Gemeente Texel, has decided to achieve ‘energy neutrality’ by 2020. Simply put, the island is aiming to cut the energy cable connected to the mainland. To reach this ambitious goal, it has joined forces with Capgemini and TexelEnergie, the local energy company, in a Smart Energy Program. The program’s objectives are to reduce energy consumption, match demand and supply more effectively, and increase the use of renewable energy.
The smart energy program aims to create projects that help individuals save energy within their own homes and also reduce public energy consumption.

The Solution

Capgemini delivered two key solutions as part of the smart energy program:

Cloud Power: self-sufficiency for electricity based on energy from renewable sources

The concept of Cloud Power is based on a community of consumers who share common preferences for their energy supply. These preferences can be based on multiple drivers including economic, environmental and social drivers. A Cloud Power community resembles the concept of a cooperative in which members own and operate the energy provider to their mutual benefits.

Smart Public Lighting: Reducing energy usage

Capgemini has also collaborated with Microsoft to create a web portal that enables public street lights to be controlled
remotely. The solution allows city employees to manage public lighting from any location with an Internet connection.

The Result

Cloud Power is a small-scale solution that presents tangible results to consumers at a reasonable price. Consumers can ‘optin’ when they think fit and ‘opt-out’ if not. Each Cloud Power community has a broad choice of objectives regarding price, reliability, fuel type, sustainability, self-sufficiency etc. The profile of each community is defined by these common objectives. Individual consumers in the community may have additional needs particular to their circumstances.

Cloud Power enables the deployment of both common and individual assets for generation, storage and load control.
The smart Public Lighting Project will reduce 37% of energy used by intelligent switching and dimming by 2015. In
addition, it will save another 43% by replacing old light bulbs. The island has also saved money by building the webportal in the Windows Azure cloud platform, which is more cost effective and can easily be scaled up or down according to demand.