About us
Tartu is the capital and largest city of Tartu County in South-Estonia. The population of Tartu is nearly 100,000 inhabitants. 30-40% of the population is in one way or another connected to universities located in the city: the University of Tartu, Estonian University of Life Sciences and others. That is why the city population is younger than the average in Estonia.
Also known as the City of Good Thoughts, Tartu already has a good track record as a smart city. Tartu has developed its e-services and paperless administration practices for decades and has been one of the first in the world to implement many smart solutions – m-parking in 2000, public Wi-Fi throughout the city in 2000, local e-elections in 2005, city mobile applications in 2006, digital signature in 2007, a fully electric taxi service in 2012, and participative budgeting in 2013 etc. Tartu ranks 15th in the European Smart Cities benchmark for smart people and joined the Covenant of Mayors in 2014 with the aim of promoting energy efficient solutions, the use of renewable energy and environmentally aware citizens.
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Use Cases
Public bike sharing system in Tartu
With the aim of encouraging the use of bicycles and make this a considerable alternative to cars, the city of Tartu has implemented a city wide bike sharing scheme as part of the SmartEnCity Project. The system consists of public city bikes, parking lots with safety locks and a management system.
Sustainable District Cooling Solution that uses residual heat
A highly energy efficient district cooling system was installed in the densely populated city center of Tartu using the river cooled chillers. The system was made more energy efficient by Fortum, using a heat pump that reuses the residual heat from cooling system for the district heating system.
Smart Home Solution Pilot in Tartu
Through the SmartEnCity project, in addition to retrofitting package that will see Tartu’s pilot area buildings fully renovated, the apartments will be supplied with a smart home system that connects to the Cumulocity cloud platform and enables data exchange and monitoring.
Retrofitting old Soviet Apartment buildings in Tartu
As part of the SmartEnCity project, the objective of the retrofitting is to drastically reduce the energy usage of the old Soviet era buildings, hrustsovkas by around 70%. Several energy saving measures have been undertaken to reach this goal.
Reusing EV Batteries for Energy Storage
Solutions for re-purposing EVs' rather quickly deteriorating but valuable batteries. EV taxis of the private company OU Takso in Tartu will be partially recharged based on renewable energy that is produced on-site with PV panels and stored in used EV batteries improving the yield of the batteries.
Smart Street Lighting in Tartu
The City of Tartu replaced 320 existing sodium lights in the city centre area of Tartu with energy efficient LED lighting. The new lighting and the traffic and environmental sensors together with the wireless control units developed by Cityntel OU form a smart street lighting network.
CNG powered buses in the city of Tartu
With the aim of having 100% of public transportation buses in Tartu run on gas by 2019, the municipality has purchased 60 new biogas busses for the public transportation network.
Public Art Gallery on Retrofitted Apartments in Tartu
Tartu organized an international art competition to make its pilot area for turning Khrushchev-era buildings into modern energy efficient homes into an attractive and unique urban environment for its citizens to enjoy.
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