The Smart Village Lab is the first physical realisation of the Green Energy Park, which was founded by the VUB and the UZ Brussel and will investigate how living in the future can become smart, sustainable and energy-efficient.Via an innovative, safe and lifelike living lab, Green Energy Park makes it possible to provide scientifically substantiated answers to questions of how Flanders can make the transition to an electric vehicle fleet and energy-efficient living.
The Smart Village Lab consists of six houses that exchange electrical and thermal energy via a Smart Energy Grid, an energy network to which collective energy systems are connected, such as neighbourhood batteries and collective charging infrastructure for electric cars. This makes it possible to model numerous scenarios and to examine how and when which technologies can be used and how we can best make them interact. For example, solar panels can be linked to an electric car or a home battery, to washing machines or to a heat pump, and the neighbourhood battery can be charged at times when the price of electricity is low.