Macro DE - Application of Energy Centre Design Tool to Characteristic Zones

Abstract:

This project quantified the opportunity for Macro level Distributed Energy (DE) across the UK and accelerate the development of appropriate technology by 2020 for the purposes of significant implementation by 2030. The project studied energy demand such as residential accommodation, local services, hospitals, business parks and equipment, and is developing a software methodology to analyse local combinations of sites and technologies. This enabled the design of optimised distributed energy delivery solutions for these areas.

This deliverable is number 2 of 3 in Work Package 4. This report presents a summary of the results of the application of the tool and design methodology developed in D4.1 to the 20 characteristic zones of demand created in work package 2. The evaluation is carried out for all 20 characteristic zones in terms of economic performance, carbon emission, efficiency in the use of fuel and also energy security

The design methodology has been implemented in Microsoft Excel, with the add-in WhatsBest! for optimisation. The optimiser minimises the total annualised cost of the energy centre and calculates the CO₂ emissions associated with operating the energy centre and heat network. Constraints may be imposed by the user, e.g. to select or deselect certain DE systems, to achieve a given level of CO₂ emissions less than a specified limit, etc. To optimise the design and operation of the energy centre to satisfy the thermal demand of a zone takes around 5 minutes computing time on a desktop PC.

The tool has been applied to 100 different designs in the classification and clustering process of WP 2, confirming a level of robustness of the tool. In this report, results for the 20 characteristic zones are presented.

Publication Year:

2012

Publisher:

ETI

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5286/UKERC.EDC.000272

Author(s):

Oluleye, G. and Jobson, M.