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Dr Rob Liddiard
Research Associate
Bartlett School Env, Energy & Resources
Faculty of the Built Environment
- Joined UCL
- 27th Feb 2012
Research summary
Rob is a member of the EPSRC-funded Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS). As part of the UCL Energy Institute Building Stock Laboratory team, Rob is principally engaged in the identification/characterisation of the activities carried out in non-domestic premises and their consequent energy use. The outputs are used in the 3DStock model of England and Wales, which is then intrinsic to the SimStock dynamic energy model.
Much of the information on numbers of premises, activities and the areas used comes from the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). These data are cleaned and fed into the 3DStock model and the CaRB2 national-scale model, to estimate energy use in the building stock of England & Wales. The VOA updates its records continuously, so it is in theory possible to update the model as these data become available.
Rob is also working on the EPSRC-funded London Urban Sub-terrain Energy Recovery (LUSTER) project. A UCL team consisting of Rob, Steve Evans (UCL Energy) and Hector Altamirano-Medina (UCL Institute of Environmental Design and Engineering), is collaborating with a team from London South Bank University. The project is a feasibility study for the extraction of heat from tunnels under London, which is then upgraded through the use of heat pumps and distributed to buildings that can make use of this relatively low grade source of heat. The model will use the UCL 3DStock model to map the locations of potential heat demand and supply, and then match these in the most efficient manner. Principally, Rob is working on the heat demand aspects of the project.
Previously, Rob was part of the EPSRC-funded Centre for Energy Epidemiology and prior to that the project "New Empirically Based Models of Energy Use in the Building Stock".
Additionally, Rob is interested in the provision and use of information for the operation of buildings.
Teaching summary
Rob contributes a couple of lectures/seminars each year, principally for the MSc course Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment and the MSc in Energy Systems and Data Analytics.
Biography
Rob joined UCL Energy Institute in March 2012, having completed his doctorate earlier that year at the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD), at De Montfort University, Leicester. His thesis research investigated the "Characterisation of Space Use and Electricity Consumption in Non-domestic Buildings", with particular relevance to the estimation of internal gains resulting from the operation of electrical appliances. The profiles of characteristics are for use at the urban scale, but are applied at the scale of individual premises.
Rob began his higher education with the Open University, before going full-time at the University of Birmingham, from where he graduated with a BSc (hons) in Sustainable Technology, in 2005. Rob remained, for a short while, at the University where he worked in its own Power Station. Then, prior to enrolling at the IESD, Rob was a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate, employed by London South Bank University, developing an online building log book application.