• Energy Research

AbstractThe UK energy technology innovation system (ETIS) has undergone wholesale remaking in recent years, in terms of its aims, funding and organisation. We analyse this process and distinguish between three phases since 2000: new beginnings, momentum building and urgency and review. Within an international trend to ETIS rebuilding, UK experience has been distinctive: from a low starting base in the early-2000s, to system remaking under a strong decarbonisation policy imperative in the late-2000s, to multiple and contested drivers in the early-2010s. Public funding levels have been erratic, with a rapid increase and a more recent decline. The private business sector has played a leading role in this remaking, and as this influence has grown, the role and style of energy innovation has shifted from long term niches to the shorter term mainstream. The UK ETIS suffers from persistent problems: fragmentation, low transparency and weak links to the research evidence base.

To improve access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy in rural areas of the global south, off-grid systems using renewable generation and energy storage are often proposed. However, solution design is often technology-driven, with insufficient consideration of social and cultural contexts. This leads to a risk of unintended consequences and inappropriate systems that do not meet local needs. To address this problem, this paper describes the application of a capabilities-led approach to understanding a community’s multi-dimensional energy poverty and assessing their needs as they see them, in order to better design suitable technological interventions. Data were collected in Tlamacazapa, Mexico, through site visits and focus groups with men and women. These revealed the ways in which constrained energy services undermined essential capabilities, including relating to health, safety, relationships and earning a living, and highlighted the specific ways in which improved energy services, such as lighting, cooking and mechanical power could improve capabilities in the specific context of Tlamacazapa. Based on these findings, we propose some potential technological interventions to address these needs. The case study offers an illustration of an assessment method that could be deployed in a variety of contexts to inform the design of appropriate technological interventions.

Abstract With the growing adoption of intermittent renewable energy generation the role for energy storage to provide a number of service needs is being increasingly recognised. However, ‘energy storage’ encompasses a family of technologies, each with its own set of performance, cost and physical characteristics, at different stages of development. At the same time, each energy system – however defined – has specific needs; and energy systems are themselves part of a wider socio-technical system which has aims beyond the confines of the energy ‘trilemma’. As energy storage technologies develop, funding is becoming available to demonstrate their application in realistic environments. However, with multiple technical and non-technical factors to consider, it is challenging for many decision makers who often have limited expertise and resources to select which projects to support. In this paper we first describe a novel framework for assessing the wider benefits that could come from deploying energy storage using Multi-Attribute Value Theory (MAVT), a form of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. We then use the framework to assess six potential energy storage projects through a combination of technical analysis and stakeholder input in the county of Cornwall in the UK: a region that has good solar and wind resource with relatively low demand and constrained network infrastructure. The projects assessed were: power to gas, a distributed battery system, battery storage integrated with solar PV and demand from Cornwall Airport Newquay, liquid air energy storage, battery storage integrated with wave energy, and thermal energy storage at a new residential development. We conclude that MAVT can provide a straightforward and user-friendly approach, which can be easily used by decision makers for assessing energy storage projects across a range of criteria and promoting engagement with stakeholders. This approach also allows the subjectivity of decision-making, a potential limitation, to be explored through a sensitivity analysis. The use of MAVT can lead to important insights for the development of energy systems, which in this study included the importance of local priorities to decision-making. In this case, battery storage with PV and demand from Cornwall Airport Newquay was the top-ranking project, performing well across a range of attributes including the maturity of the technology, its ability to defer grid upgrades and economic viability.

Abstract Energy storage has been identified as a priority technology for innovation. However, the rapidly developing family of storage technologies will find it difficult, under the current regulatory regimes, to compete with conventional generators for the provision of electricity system services, and this is likely to impede innovation. This paper analyses and categorizes 16 investment barriers hindering the near-term deployment of energy storage technologies in electricity markets, which are related to four regulatory and public attitudes barriers. The most important regulatory barrier is the current classification of storage as a generation asset, despite it being unable to provide a positive net flow of electricity, which is used to justify double network usage charges. The merit order design of balancing and ancillary markets hampers the ability of storage technologies to recoup their relatively high capital cost, while capacity markets penalize their limited discharge duration. Network companies are in the best position to realize the system value of storage, but their ownership may only be acceptable if system operation is made independent of network operation. Current initiatives to address these issues include flexible connection agreements and the development of enhanced frequency response and aggregate fast reserve services. However, to remove the identified barriers, a market structure that valued the flexibility offered by storage, viewing it as complementing rather than competing with network and generation assets, would be required.

© 2016 Elsevier LtdBackground Independence from fossil fuels, energy diversification, decarbonisation and energy efficiency are key prerequisites to make a national, regional or continental economy competitive in the global marketplace. As Europe is about to generate 20% of its energy demand from Renewable Energy Sources (RES) by 2020, adequate RES integration and renewable energy storage throughout the entire food cold chain must properly be addressed. Scope and approach Refrigerated warehouses for chilled and frozen foods are large energy consumers and account for a significant portion of the global energy demand. Nevertheless, the opportunity for RES integration in the energy supply of large food storage facilities is often neglected. In situ power generation using RES permits capture of a large portion of virtually free energy, thereby reducing dramatically the running costs and carbon footprint, while enhancing the economic competitiveness. In that context, there exist promising engineering solutions to exploit various renewables in the food preservation sector, in combination with the emerging sustainability-enhancing technology of Cryogenic Energy Storage (CES). Key findings and conclusions Substantial research endeavours are driven by the noble objective to turn the Europe's Energy Union into the world's number one in renewable energies. Integrating RES, in synchrony with CES development and proper control, is capable of both strengthening the food refrigeration sector and improving dramatically the power grid balance and energy system sustainability. Hence, this article aims to familiarise stakeholders of the European and global food preservation industry with state-of-the-art knowledge, know-how, opportunities and professional achievements in the concerned field.

Liquid air energy storage (LAES) is a technology for bulk electricity storage in the form of liquid air with power output potentially above 10 MW and storage capacity of 100 s MWh. In this paper, we address the performance of LAES and the experimental evidences gathered through the first LAES pilot plant in the world developed by Highview power storage at Slough (London) and currently installed at the University of Birmingham (UK). We developed a numerical model of LAES plant and carried out an experimental campaign to gather new results which show the LAES operating principles, the reliability of the technology, the startup/shut down performance, and the influence of operational parameters. In summary, this work (a) contributes to the advancement of thermomechanical storage systems, (b) provides new experimental evidences and results for LAES technology, and (c) highlights the crucial aspects to necessarily improve the performance of LAES.

This paper reports an integrated system consisting of a diesel genset and a Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) unit for power supply to isolated end-users in remote areas. The integration is through three parts: direct-driven piston-compression, external air turbine-driven supercharging, and flue gas waste recovery for super-heating. The performance of the integrated system is compared to a single diesel unit and a dual-diesel unit with a capacity of electricity supply to a village of 100 households in the UK. It is found the fuel consumption of the integrated system is only 50% of the single-diesel unit and 77% of the dual-diesel unit. The addition of the CAES unit not only provides a shift to electrical energy demand, but also produces more electricity due to the recovery of waste heat.

The global effort to decarbonise electricity systems has led to widespread deployments of variable renewable energy generation technologies, which in turn has boosted research and development interest in bulk Electrical Energy Storage (EES). However despite large increases in research funding, many electricity markets with increasingly large proportions of variable renewable generation have seen little actual bulk EES deployment. While this can be partly attributed to the need for technological developments, it is also due to the challenge of fairly rewarding storage operators for the range of services that storage provides to the wider network, especially in markets that have undergone significant restructuring and liberalisation. Pumped Hydroelectric Energy Storage (PHES) is the overwhelmingly established bulk EES technology (with a global installed capacity around 130 GW) and has been an integral part of many markets since the 1960s. This review provides an historical overview of the development of PHES in several significant electrical markets and compares a number of mechanisms that can reward PHES in different international market frameworks. As well as providing up-to-date information about PHES, a primary motivation for this work is to provide an overview about the types of rewards available to bulk EES for the wider storage community including investors, technology developers and policy-makers. Observing that bulk EES projects seem to be unattractive investments for the private sector, the paper also includes a brief discussion in terms of public sector investment.