The Triangulum Project was one of three projects chosen from nineteen submissions in 2014 to receive support from the European Commission’s “Smart Cities and Communities” Horizon 2020 funding call.

The project’s three main participating partner Lighthouse Cities are Manchester (UK), Eindhoven (Netherlands), and Stavanger (Norway), with three Follower Cities – Leipzig (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic), and Sabadell (Spain). The Consortium is made up of 22 partners.  The Manchester partners include Manchester City Council, University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Siemens plc, and Clicks and Links Ltd.

Manchester’s overall objective is for the Oxford Road Corridor to become one of the largest knowledge driven low carbon districts in Europe. We aim to decouple the link between a reduction in carbon emissions whilst at the same time increasing economic activity. Very few cities have been able to exhibit this ‘smart green growth’; Corridor Manchester has the right conditions and profile to demonstrate this. The rapidly increasing population growth which our urban cores are experiencing (Manchester is the fastest growing city in the UK outside London) will put increased pressure on the way our cities deliver public services, such as; housing, transport, energy, water and other basic services including health and education. The cities that compete most effectively in the future will be those that can deliver ‘smart green growth’ against a backdrop of rapidly increasing urbanisation.

Demonstrating the implementation of smart city districts (Corridor in Manchester) across the themes of energy, mobility and ICT.  The aim is to model a low energy district including building optimisation, installation of innovative low carbon energy generation to demonstrate off-grid capability as well and carbon and energy savings.  The mobility element involves utilisation of electric vehicles and electric cargo bicycles by organisations along the Corridor.  The data gained from these and other sources will then be curated and displayed in an accessible way to enable further citizen and SME engagement.

The energy theme is focussed on:

• Building Optimisations in Manchester Art Gallery, and Manchester Town Hall complex.
• Grid Separation – simulation of the disconnection and re-connection aimed at reducing demand.
• Central Controller – a central system that controls and enables optimal usage of controllable assets. Central Interface Components have been installed at MCC and Manchester Met.
• Energy Assets – Electrical Energy Storage solution is being installed at the Manchester Met’s Birley Energy Centre to maximise the use of the generated energy by offering a new option to store surplus energy for use at times of high demand. In addition, 157kw of PV installation has been installed at  Manchester Met’s Bright Building site also.

The mobility theme is delivering:

• Electric vehicles – 7 vans & 2 pool cars at Manchester Met and UoM.
• Charging infrastructure – for the electric vehicles.
• ECargo bikes – for use along the Corridor, currently being trialled by an SME and the IT department at UoM.
• Education – integrating the learning and data into courses run by the 2 Universities.

The ICT theme is focussed on:

• An Open data Platform – Manchester-i.
• 3D Visualisation of the data generated by the scheme.
• Development of three exemplar apps for use of the data EG a behaviour Change app to encourage students to reduce their energy consumption at peak times.
• Open Innovation Challenges to explore new ways to utilise the data.

This project will run to January 2020