CELL – Collaborative Energy Living Lab

The pilot site Am Aawasser, located in Buochs, Switzerland is spart of the Collaborative Energy Living Lab (CELL). The site comprises three residential buildings with 23 apartments and 600 m² of commercial space, all owned by a single investor, SANI Immobilien AG. This unified ownership has enabled a highly integrated energy system aimed at achieving near self-sufficiency through the combination of diverse local generation and storage assets. The community features a 124 kW peak PV system, an 85 kW run-of-river hydroelectric plant, thermal storage tanks, and battery storage, alongside EV chargers and shared electric vehicles. A new battery system dedicated to the INTELLIGENT project is being installed by May 2025, replacing an earlier setup. The site also includes infrastructure for a methanol fuel cell, which is planned for future integration.

Currently, the pilot site achieves around 90% energy self-sufficiency, consuming approximately 200 MWh annually, which demonstrates the effectiveness of its decentralised setup. However, internal energy sharing between individual apartments is limited by contractual arrangements; while the buildings are centrally managed, the apartments are not individually connected to the distribution system operator (DSO). To extend the potential for flexibility trading, four external apartments located within Buochs – equipped with smart meters and under the same DSO – have been added to the demonstration. These units allow testing of inter-site energy transactions under realistic regulatory and technical conditions, despite not possessing energy assets themselves.