Transforming the Catholic University of Lille Campus into a Smart Grid

Since the second World War, technological (r)evolutions have been further integrating our societies, causing a disruption not only in our life styles and know-how but also mentalities. Environmental awareness is a good example. Nowadays, everyone wants to be able to produce his/her own “green” and local energy. However, the French power grid, very centralized and hierarchical in its functioning, and requiring a lot of human intervention along its operations, was not thought of in this perspective of decentralization of energy. One of the solutions would be of course to create a new power grid. Another would be to use Information Technology to pilot the current power grid in a “smarter” way: this represents the Smart Grid. It is therefore a ubiquitous computer network parallel to the electrical network which must be built for communication. The Catholic University of Lille, a university in the heart of the city with a substantial and long-standing real estate heritage, has taken up this issue as part of its LiveTREE program.