A comparative assessment of future heat and power sources for the UK domestic sector

Abstract

In 2003, the UK government announced its aspiration for a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 relative to 1990 levels. To achieve this radical target, action is required across all sectors of the economy to reduce energy demand significantly and to increase the supply of energy from zero or low carbon sources. Focusing on the domestic sector, where energy consumption is currently rising, technologies such as fuel cells, Stirling and internal combustion engine micro-CHP and heat pumps are often cited as the means to reduce carbon emissions. However, there is much uncertainty as to the potential environmental benefits (if any) of the aforementioned technologies when set against a picture of changing energy supply and demand. The paper describes an analysis in which the performance of the four different technologies mentioned above was compared against a common datum of energy supply from condensing gas boilers and grid electricity for a number of scenarios. The aim of the analysis was to determine if significant CO2 savings could be made and to determine the minimum thermodynamic performance criteria that these technologies must attain if they are to yield any environmental benefits. The main finding of the work is that air source heat pumps yield significantly more CO2 savings than any of the other technologies examined

Energy Data Visualization Requires Additional Approaches to Continue to be Relevant in a World with Greater Low-Carbon Generation

“…The compromise of a daily time window to display the different variables is not, however, without its risks; the actual demand for natural gas varies significantly within a day (Newborough and Augood, 1999;Cockroft and Kelly, 2006;Hawkes et al, 2009) and the actual demand for transport fuels will also vary significantly throughout a month (Anable et al, 2012) and within a day. This is demonstrably not a problem to the natural gas or transport fuel networks, which are designed and built to cope with this within day and within month variation, but it would most definitely be a problem when this within-day and withinmonth variability is transferred over to the electrical network through the greater installation of resistive heating, heat pumps, and electric vehicles.…”

Model-based multi-parametric programming strategies towards the integration of design, control and operational optimization

“…The relatively new technology of the PEMFC lacks of liability due to limited operational testing for a significant amount of time but o ers great advantages such as low acoustic noise and no vibration [361]. [238,281] Design and development of domestic trigeneration systems Savola et al (2005Savola et al ( , 2007 [315,316] Small scale CHP model development and MINLP formulation maximizing production objectives Wu et al (2006) [361] Review on Combined cooling, heat and power cogeneration systems Onovwiona et al (2006) [263] Technology review on heat and power cogeneration systems Videla et al (2006) [348] Modeling and dynamic simulation of small scale internal combustion based CHP systems Cockroft et al (2006) [78] Assessment of power sources for cogeneration Dorer et al (2009) [92] Energy, environmental and performance studies on PEMFC, SOFC, Stirling engine and internal combustion engine based residential cogeneration Collazos et al (2009) [79] Optimal control with mixed integer formulation and stochastic elements for micro generation in domestic applications Konstantinidis et al…”

Impact on energy requirements and emissions of heat pumps and micro-cogenerators participating in demand side management

“…ASHP and mCHP units have both been suggested as technologies capable of reducing the carbon emissions associated with domestic space heating demands (Cockroft and Kelly 2006;Dorer and Weber 2009;Peacock and Newborough 2005;Roselli et al 2011). Both types of unit have significant electrical power flows associated with them; ASHP units are a relatively large load and mCHP units generate electricity which can sometimes result in net electrical export from a dwelling.…”