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UCL-led team to develop new model of energy consumption
19 April 2010
Links:
ucl.ac.uk/energy/" target="_self">UCL Energy Institute
A UCL-led team of researchers has won a grant worth more than £850,000 to develop a new model of energy consumption.
The grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council covers the cost of a three-year project led by Tadj Oreszczyn, Director of the UCL Energy Institute (UCL-EI).
The project will involve a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, building scientists and energy system modellers from the UCL-EI, UCL Mathematics, and elsewhere.
Professor Oreszczyn and his colleagues hope to develop a model of energy consumption that links building and occupant diversity with occupant behaviour.
Recent studies have revealed profound differences in energy use between different groups of occupants - a variability that existing models fail to capture.
This project promises for the first time to link behaviour, the housing stock and the energy supply in dynamic, hourly demand-supply system models.
The researchers will also seek to answer a number of key questions, including:
- how are internal temperatures changing?
- how do energy efficiency improvements in houses and occupant behaviour interact?
- how can the UK minimise the combined cost of renovating the housing stock and renewing energy supply systems?
Understanding how, when and why we consume energy is becoming increasingly important as government and industry plan and implement the decarbonisation of the country's housing stock, a key step in the move toward a low-carbon world.
For more information about the UCL Energy Institute, follow the link above.
Image: a gas boiler
UCL context
The UCL Energy Institute brings together different perspectives, understandings and procedures in energy research, transcending the boundaries between academic disciplines. It coordinates multidisciplinary teams from across the university, with a particular focus on energy-demand reduction and managing the transition to a low-energy, low-carbon economy.
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