Micro Distributed Energy (Micro-DE)

Housing energy use is responsible for 27% of UK CO2 emissions and so has an important role to play in achieving the 80% reduction target at the horizon 2050. The ETI micro Distributed Energy (DE) project was a scoping and feasibility study to identify opportunities for micro-generation storage and control technology development at an individual dwelling level in the UK. To date, the penetration of household level distributed energy schemes in the UK has been limited to date. With smart metering being mandated, the immediate initial testing of these distributed energy systems is especially important.

The project sought to focus on the different DE technologies available that could be combined to reduce the energy consumption and CO2 emission per dwelling to reach the target of 80% reduction. This included technologies such as Biomass, Micro-CHP system Heat-pump (Air source heat pump and ground source heat pump) Solar PV, Solar thermal and Small wind turbine (P < 5 kW). This was achieved through the development of a segmented model of the UK housing stock. Importantly, the project also sought to better understand specific Micro DE systems in-situ along with the customer’s behaviour and interactions, and produce a ‘technical roadmap’ and represents the first step towards developing a larger-scale field trial encompassing the range of homes and user-groups in the UK.

People

PI:Tadj Oreszczyn                                             

Rs: Eleni Oikonomou, Rokia Raslan, Anna Mavrogianni and Andy Stone 

Output

In addition to a number of key policy reports, the project led to the development of a segmented model (ETI Micro-DE model) of the UK housing stock. This stock-level model was supplemented with detailed, real-time supply and demand energy-usage gathered from field trials of micro distributed generation and storage technology in conjunction with building control systems. UCL contributed significantly to both the development and testing of this model. 

Impact

As with other ETI funded work, this project was implemented with the aim of producing high quality research with widespread policy and commercial impact. The Micro DE aimed to identify the most promising technological development and demonstration opportunities to accelerate the improvement of UK residential energy use and contribution to the CO2 emissions reduction. That outputs of this project now feed into the ETI funded Smart Systems and Heat programme. 

Links

For further information please contact: Rokia Raslan