These latest studies follow the first stage in the ETI’s DE program announced in October, when ETI launched a project to identify the next generation of high efficiency technologies to generate low carbon energy from waste.
Dr David Clarke, chief executive of the ETI, said: “The ETI distributed energy projects aim to accelerate take-up of affordable low-carbon heat and power delivery at a local level. By supplying both heat and power to end users from a common fuel source, significant improvements in efficiency can be achieved compared to conventional, centralised power generation and separate, local heat generation. The Macro distributed energy project will explore the opportunities available from alternative fuel sources.”
The Macro DE project, costing GBP795,000, will study energy demand and supply profiles for sites, such as local services, hospitals and business parks, and equipment. It will also develop a software tool methodology to analyse local combinations of sites and technologies and enable the design of optimised DE delivery solutions for these areas.
The focus is to accelerate development of Macro DE technology development by 2020 for the purposes of significant implementation by 2030. The project is expected to identify a number of larger scale technology development and demonstration projects for the ETI to consider developing. The 12-month long project will be led by Catepillar, with support from the University of Manchester and EDF.
The ETI’s Micro DE work is focused on the residential sector. The GBP1.1m Micro DE project focuses on modeling the potential impact and operation of technologies in households.
ETI said that a small-scale field trial will be put in place to understand the core issues and opportunities in using smart meters and controllers to combine innovative building energy services management with the next generation of household generation and storage devices. This is the first step towards developing a larger-scale field trial encompassing the varying range of homes and user-groups in the UK. The project will include an assessment of the most up to date technologies currently available.
The final objective of the Micro DE project is 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.
The 12-month long project consortium will be led by PassivSystems, in conjunction with University College London, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and EDF.
