• Energy Research

There is a large consensus concerning the expected trend, if not the magnitude of change, of the UK climate in the coming decades [Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, April 2007]. This study aims to quantify how such changes will have a direct effect on heating and cooling energy use in future office environments (i.e. by the year 2030). When considering future offices, it is also necessary to account for a change in the small power and lighting equipment being used, in this case by assuming an improved efficiency in both categories. This will also have a significant effect on the balance of heating and cooling an office. Furthermore, the subtle effect of a change in location within the UK can affect results further, with northern cities having substantially higher heating loads (and lower cooling loads) than southern locations. Such factors can influence approaches towards reducing future office energy demands and, in some cases, be the difference between a heating-dominated or cooling-dominated building. This study should also inform future choices for supplying energy to office buildings, in particular microgeneration options. It confirms the importance of dealing with demand-side changes before assessing the supply-side opportunities, with buildings having very different heating and cooling needs post-refurbishment. The study also highlights the importance, and possibilities, of adapting to future climates, and the benefits of promoting heating-dominated buildings instead of cooling-dominated.

Abstract Blockchains or distributed ledgers are an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest from energy supply firms, startups, technology developers, financial institutions, national governments and the academic community. Numerous sources coming from these backgrounds identify blockchains as having the potential to bring significant benefits and innovation. Blockchains promise transparent, tamper-proof and secure systems that can enable novel business solutions, especially when combined with smart contracts. This work provides a comprehensive overview of fundamental principles that underpin blockchain technologies, such as system architectures and distributed consensus algorithms. Next, we focus on blockchain solutions for the energy industry and inform the state-of-the-art by thoroughly reviewing the literature and current business cases. To our knowledge, this is one of the first academic, peer-reviewed works to provide a systematic review of blockchain activities and initiatives in the energy sector. Our study reviews 140 blockchain research projects and startups from which we construct a map of the potential and relevance of blockchains for energy applications. These initiatives were systematically classified into different groups according to the field of activity, implementation platform and consensus strategy used. 1 Opportunities, potential challenges and limitations for a number of use cases are discussed, ranging from emerging peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, to decentralised marketplaces, electric vehicle charging and e-mobility. For each of these use cases, our contribution is twofold: first, in identifying the technical challenges that blockchain technology can solve for that application as well as its potential drawbacks, and second in briefly presenting the research and industrial projects and startups that are currently applying blockchain technology to that area. The paper ends with a discussion of challenges and market barriers the technology needs to overcome to get past the hype phase, prove its commercial viability and finally be adopted in the mainstream.

Projected climate change is likely to have a significant impact on a range of energy systems. When a building is the centre of that system, a changing climate will affect the energy system in several ways. Firstly, the energy demand of the building will be altered. Taken across the entire building stock, and placed in context of technological and behavioural changes over the same timescale, this can have implications for important parameters such as peak demand and load factors of energy requirement. The performance of demand-side, distribution/transmission and supply-side technologies can also alter as a result of changing temperatures. With such uncertainty, a flexible approach is required for ensuring that this whole energy system is robust for a wide range of future scenarios. Therefore, building design must have a standardised and systematic approach for integrating climate change into the overall energy assessment of a building (or buildings), understanding the implications for the larger energy network. Based on the work of the Low Carbon Futures (LCF) and Adaptation and Resilience In Energy Systems (ARIES) projects, this paper overviews some of the risks that might be linked to a changing climate in relation to provision and use of energy in buildings. The UK is used as a case-study but the outputs are demonstrated to be of relevance, and the tools applicable, to other countries.

Abstract Dynamic simulation is used with defined domestic building variants to investigate internal temperatures of UK dwellings. Factors such as a warming climate and varying internal heat gains are estimated to examine whether UK domestic buildings are likely to be prone to overheating in the future, and therefore require mechanical air conditioning. The study suggests that the ability, or inability, of the occupant to adapt to bedroom temperature is paramount in the understanding of the conditions for overheating. While this is difficult to quantify (and a range of comfort temperatures are proposed), the effect of changing the building construction and geographical location can result in significantly different thermal conditions. As might be expected, the problem appears most noticeable for buildings in the south of the UK and with lightweight constructions. Even with a window-opening schedule applied to such a scenario, the average internal temperature is simulated as being over 28 °C for almost 12% of the year. A different metric, defined as “cooling nights”, suggests that there might be a cooling problem in bedroom areas for approximately a third of the year. In the North of the UK, and also for solid wall dwellings, this problem diminishes significantly.

Despite the temperate climate, cooling loads in UK non-domestic buildings (specifically offices) have a highly significant effect on the energy use of urban areas. Recent summer heatwaves (as seen in 2005) caused blackouts in areas of London, where the requirement for cooling resulted in an electrical demand that exceeded the capacity. With summer temperatures predicted to rise, this problem is likely to be exacerbated, and the need to mitigate for such a scenario is vital. Passive and low-energy cooling techniques can play an important role in reducing official electrical demands. However, the more fundamental problem relates to the internal heat gains being generated from, in particular, IT equipment and lighting. For a country such as the UK, cooling systems in offices (and other non- domestic buildings) only exist at all due to these gains. Through the use of energy management and technologies that might be available by 2030, internal equipment gains can be reduced such that the requirements on the office cooling system are completely different, and the likelihood of a passively cooled office (or low-carbon office) greatly increased. This study thus proposes an approach for reducing office cooling loads for a UK climate, using a defined exemplar London office building to demonstrate the effect of IT equipment and lighting on cooling for the existing buildings. In addition, the effect of fabric changes and thermal adaptation of occupants (for a warmer future climate) is estimated. Finally, taking a 'make tight, ventilate right' approach (i.e. reducing infiltration and using mechanical ventilation appropriately) is looked at with regards to cooling loads and, specifically, the effectiveness of night-time ventilation.

Abstract The Low Carbon Futures project, funded by the Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate (ARCC) Programme, has the objective of using the latest UK climate projections (UKCP’09) to assess overheating in a range of domestic and non-domestic buildings. As these climate projections are probabilistic in nature, and dynamic building simulation is being used by the project to assess building performance, the information produced is vast. To understand how to filter this data into a useable tool that can interact with current building practices, the project has commissioned a range of focus groups to obtain practitioner feedback. These focus groups provide guidance on how buildings are currently designed with respect to overheating but also how future overheating risk assessments, incorporating probabilistic climate projections, might be carried out. This paper describes the assimilation of all this research into a coherent building simulation methodology that could be used by building practitioners to assess future overheating risks of a range of buildings, and provide guidance for applying adaptation solutions to prevent defined comfort thresholds being exceeded.

Abstract This paper examines the methods and input data used to assess the energy performance of residential buildings. The work concentrates on the assessment methods used to generate Energy Performance Certificates, under the European Energy Performance in Buildings Directive, for existing residential properties in the six largest European countries: UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland. Buildings are associated with 40% of final energy consumption across the European Union however this paper reveals significant variation in the methods used to identify and assess this energy consumption. The research indicates that best-practice sharing between different countries governed by the same framework is not always evident and, by taking different approaches, each country is likely to draw different conclusions about their building stock, and how to market transform these dwellings in the future.

Abstract Electricity consumption in the United Kingdom is continually growing with demand from the domestic sector a potential/major contribution to this increase in consumption. Although demand is increasing, little information exists on the domestic components that contribute to an increase in domestic energy consumption. Thus, a greater understanding on what is contributing to the increase in domestic energy usage is a pre-requisite to understand how it can be reduced in the future or, if not reduced, contained at its current level. This article discusses a separation filter designed for disaggregating domestic electrical demand data into different appliance categories. The filter is applied to a real time domestic electrical dataset spanning 1 year, and trends in standby, cold, heating element spikes and residual demand are identified. Several reasons to account for each of the trends are discussed. Additionally, the filter is applied to synthetic data both to confirm the accuracy of the separation filter and to finely adjust the filter for future application. The results indicate an increase in occupancy-related demand consumption during the winter months and an increase in cold consumption during the summer months. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that in contrast to changes observed in occupancy-related demand and cold consumption, there is little variation in standby and heating element spike consumption throughout the year. Finally, the potential advantage of incorporating a tailored separation filter into domestic smart meters is discussed.