TheEarlybirds’ COLONY model
The TheEarlybirds models allow one to make concrete choices in the transition to a fossil-free built environment.
The COLONY model calculates what is optimal individually and collectively for an entire district or neighborhood.
A neighborhood has many birds
For TheEarlybirds, a bird colony is a model for a district: different birds nest close to each other. The district consists of different buildings: detached, stacked and terraced houses, but also schools and care facilities. And every address handles energy differently, now and after a heat transition.
TheEarlybirds have developed their COLONY model to determine the best way for the neighborhoods to undergo a heat transition. It calculates optimal heating solutions for each address and for the district as a collective.
How does it work?
In a data-driven, interactive and most visual way, the COLONY model provides all stakeholders in the district’s heat transition – the citizens, building owners, the housing corporation, the network operator, the municipality, an energy corporation, the district water board and heat suppliers – an insight into financial driven choices made per address.
In this way, you will work towards a technical strategy to get districts and neighborhouds fossil-free with the most optimal measures.
The COLONY model provides an insight (for example) per each address:
- the optimal combination of energy label and heating technology,
- whether it is attractive to connect your home to the heat network,
- how many homes will connect to the heat network,
- what the future energy demand will be and
- where bottlenecks lie in the electricity grid.
How does it work?
In an interactive and most visual way, the COLONY model provides all stakeholders in the district’s heat transition – the residents, building owners, a housing corporation, the network operator, the municipality, an energy corporation, the district water board and heat suppliers – an insight into financial driven choices made per address.
In this way, we develop together with you a strategy to get districts and neighborhouds fossil-free with the most optimal measures.
The COLONY model provides an insight (for example) per each address:
- the optimal combination of energy label and heating technology,
- whether it is attractive to connect your home to the heat network,
- how many homes will connect to the heat network,
- what the future energy demand will be and
- where bottlenecks lie in the electricity grid.
Related projects
“COLONY is a great instrument to see from a residents’ perspective what collective heating solutions do in relation to individual all-electric variants. This approach fitted in well with the way we are working on the energy transition in Kaag and Braassem. The tooling also helps to to make the task of the energy transition concrete and transparent for those involved. Because of the many different buttons you can turn, you need to think very sharply and carefully about which scenarios you exactly want.”
Guido van Enckevort, sustainablist, municipality of Kaag and Braassem
