Assess the local electricity consumption: the case of Reunion island through a GIS based method

• Main Authors: Fiona Bénard-Sora, Jean-Philippe Praene, Yatina Calixte
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIMS Press 2018-05-01
• Series: AIMS Energy
• Subjects: electricity consumption ratio; building typology; GIS
• Online Access: http://www.aimspress.com/energy/article/2029/fulltext.html

Succeeding energy transition is the current challenging objective of many remote islands such as Reunion Island to reduce their dependency to fossil resources. To define an efficient energy framework strategy for the territory, it is important to be able to assess the electricity consumption intensity per typology of consumers. A particular attention must be paid on building electricity consumption in energy planning scenarios. This paper proposes to investigate the electricity consumption ratio per square meter per building type which appears as a relevant indicator. The proposed methodology aims at filling the lack of data (ratio kWh/m2/ type of consumers) when this information doesn’t exist for a territory. This type of ratio can be useful in two ways: on the one hand to characterize the building energy demand, and, on the other hand, to understand the consumption mode of the inhabitants. We can therefore provide future energy policy framework in favor of demand-side management what is a key step, a lock to solve for the deployment of sustainable cities. This work calculates electricity consumption ratios per area by using a GIS (Geographic Information System) method, distinguishing the type of building. The case of Reunion Island is studied and four building categories are identified corresponding to the functional characteristics such as industry, administration, companies and residential. The results highlight that residential sector has one of the lowest electricity ratios with a value of 29.84 kWh/m2, but also the highest part of electricity consumption, 45.2%. The different ratio value has been cross validated by estimating municipalities electricity consumption based on the distribution of consumers and the associated ratio.