The new district is largely self-sufficient in energy from hydropower and photovoltaics
Keystone / Clemens Bilan
The new climate-neutral district being built in Cham, canton Zug, relies solely on renewable energies and has been awarded the Watt d’Or 2024, a seal of quality awarded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) in recognition of exceptional achievements in the energy sector.
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In the run-up to the award ceremony, the SFOE wrote that a modern residential and commercial district with around 1,000 flats and a further 1,000 jobs is being built in the town of Cham in central Switzerland. The new district is largely self-sufficient in energy from hydropower and photovoltaics. Cham Group AG and its partners received the prize in the “Renewable Energies” category for realising the “energy cluster” of the new district.
The Knonau-Maschwanden-Mettmenstetten secondary school in Zurich was honoured in the “Buildings and Space” category. The school complex with five buildings and an indoor swimming pool is completely climate-neutral and utilises photovoltaics, heat pumps and a combined heat and power plant, the report continued.
A pilot project by the Aargau-based grid operator AEW Energie AG in collaboration with the federal technology institute ETH Zurich was awarded the Watt d’Or in the “Energy Technologies” category. With the help of an optimisation algorithm, AEW’s electricity grid can be virtually strengthened by up to a tenth, the SFOE added.
An algorithm for coordinating charging stations for electric vehicles received the prize in the “Energy-efficient mobility” category. The project by Clemap AG and Otto Fischer AG, both from Zurich, can for example dynamically adapt the charging power to the electricity production of the photovoltaic system, wrote the SFOE.
The 17th Watt d’Or award ceremony will take place on Thursday evening. A total of 17 entries were nominated from 42 applications.
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