EnergyNewsletter

Winter 2015

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Contents

Integrating Renewables Conference.............................................................................2

Conference programme...................................................................................................4

Integrate - the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable

Energy..................................................................................................................................5

METER - shining a light on electricity use.................................................................6

A WICKED problem - energy management in the UK retail sector......................7

New Energy Systems Thinkers (NEST) at Oxford..................................................11

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Integrating Renewables Fourth annual Oxford Energy conference

The fourth annual Oxford Energy Conference, which took place on Monday 5 October at the Maths Institute, was devoted to discussing the challenges and opportunities of ‘Integrating Renewables’. In many parts of the world on-shore wind is now the cheapest form of electricity in terms of generating costs, and the cost of solar is falling rapidly. However, electricity generated by wind during the night, when demand is low, has little or no value, however cheap it may be, while the cost of integrating uncontrollable wind and solar power with other sources to produce a steady supply matched to demand will grow as their contributions grow. The meeting, which attracted some 240 people from across the university and the energy sector, was opened by Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith who gave a brief introduction to the challenge of integrating renewables, and announced the launch of the Oxford Martin Integrate programme – see page five. His slides and those of other speakers can be found at www.energy.ox.ac.uk/conference. The full programme can be found on page four. The first session was devoted to the potential of important renewables, in term of resources and future technological developments and costs. Henry Snaith, who has pioneered perovskite solar cells and was named as one of ten people who matter by Nature at the end of 2012, spoke on solar. Andrew Garrad spoke on wind power, Richard Willden spoke on marine energy, in which the UK is exceptionally well endowed, and Mike

Maxine Frerk (Ofgem) and Rupert Steele (ScottishPower)

Mason described the potential of using crops that grow on semi-arid land to produce methane (which can then be burned to produce electricity) in anaerobic digesters that incorporate lessons learned from cows, which hydrolyse cellulose some 20 times faster than man-made digesters. The challenges of handling large contributions of renewables that are already being encountered in Germany, and how they might be handled, were outlined by Niels Ehlers. The technical response to the challenge, in

Germany and across the world, which will grow as the contributions of renewables increases, will consist of improved and greatly expanded grid scale energy storage, discussed in a talk by Steve Saunders; an enlarged and strengthened grid, presented by Brendan Devlin from the European Commission, who spoke of the North Sea as the new test bed for “low carbon indigenous resources” such as wind; and demand side measures, which were discussed by Nick Eyre. Creating a policy framework and designing markets

that will provide suitable incentives and deliver whatever may turn out to be the right mixture of technical measures will be as challenging as developing those measures. Cameron Hepburn and Ben Irons discussed possible mixtures and political and economic measures that will help. The day ended with a panel and general discussion of the political, technical, social and economic barriers to integrating renewables. Decentralisation, water use and embedded energy were just some of the topics touched on by the panellists and in contributions from the audience, which demonstrated the many complex issues that must be addressed in order to successfully integrate renewables into energy systems.

www.energy.ox.ac.uk/conference

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Juliet Davenport Good Energy

Henry SnaithOxford University

Brendan DevlinEU Commission

Conference programme

Welcome and Introduction Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith (Oxford)

Potential of RenewablesChair - Juliet Davenport (Good Energy)Solar – Henry Snaith (Oxford)Wind – Andrew Garrad (DNV GL)Bioenergy – Mike Mason (Oxford)Marine - Richard Willden (Oxford)

The German Experience Chair - Andrew Buglass (Buglass Energy Advisory)Niels Ehlers (50Hertz)

Elements of Solutions Chair - Paul Beasley (Siemens)Storage – Steve Saunders (Arup)Super-grid – Brendan Devlin (European Commission) Demand Shifting and Reduction - Nick Eyre (Oxford)

Synthesis Chair - Lord Oxburgh (Parliamentary Group on Renewables)Economics – Cameron Hepburn (Oxford) Scenarios - Ben Irons (Aurora Energy Research)

Overcoming Political, Technical, Social, and Economic BarriersChair - Rupert Steele (ScottishPower)Juliet Davenport (Good Energy) Tony Cocker (E.ON)David Wright (National Grid)Maxine Frerk (Ofgem)

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Integratethe Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy

Energy supply is responsible for 65% of greenhouse gas emissions, so tran-sition to a low carbon energy system is critical to mitigating climate change. Intermittent renewable energy sources will play a key role, mainly through a large contribution to electricity generation. Integrating them effectively into electricity systems is therefore a critical 21st Century challenge. Technical approaches to accommodating intermittency in power sys-tems are excess generation capacity, demand flexibility, energy storage and grid inter-connection. However, the best way to deploy these in combination is not agreed. Moreover, electricity markets currently provide insufficient in-centives for capacity, flexibility and innovation; and the scale at which action is required ranges from the individual household to international agreements. A fundamental re-think of regulatory, market and institutional arrangements is required. Any changes will need to ensure continuing high levels of elec-tricity system security on which modern societies depend. This programme aims to deliver a framework for understanding technical, market and policy requirements for integrating renewables across a wide range of scales, resource types and contexts. We will develop the conceptual tools needed to understand the role and combination of different approaches in different scenarios, how these might be adopted in electricity markets and how such innovation might be stimulated and governed. We will investigate how this is beginning to play out and what further change is needed at a number of scales, ranging from new mini-grids to continental systems. The programme brings together an interdisciplinary team of eight experts on energy issues, from five Oxford University departments. It has practical support from key industrial and government organisations and with that support aims to deliver early results relevant to technical, commercial and policy problems.

Co-directors: Dr Malcolm McCulloch and Dr Nick EyreOther investigators: Prof Peter Bruce, Dr Sarah Darby, Prof Cameron Hepburn, Prof Angus Johnston, Prof Pete Grindrod, Dr John Rhys

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Shining a light on electricity useNew EPSRC fellowship to explore what we use electricity for

Do you remember what you did yesterday evening? Good. And do you know how much electricity you were consuming during that time?

If not, then you are in good company, because nobody really knows. Not even the suppliers or

system operators know what we actually do with all the electricity they provide us with. Surprised? Well, until now there was no need for them to know. So long as we can guess (sorry, model) how much electricity we require collectively at any point in time, then all is fine. The right amount of thermal plant can be scheduled and called up as and when needed. With large scale penetration of renewables this approach becomes less viable. Rather than just ‘predicting and providing’, it could become necessary to shift flexible uses of electricity from when wind and

sun are in short supply to times when the balance

between supply and demand in more relaxed.But what is ‘flexible use’? What types of loads are we willing to shift? Suddenly it does matter to know when electricity is used, for what and by whom. Measuring and Evaluating Time- and Energy-use Relationships (METER) is a new EPSRC fellowship project, which is about to find out. It is the first study of its kind, using smart-phones to measure electricity use while also collecting

Dr Phil Grunewald has been awarded a five year EPSRC fellowship to apply the smart-phone based approach, which he developed with Dr Russell Layberry.

Jo, what are you doing at the moment?

Resting

Eating

Preparing food ...

Clearing up

Other ...

Collecting activity information using innovative smart phone approaches

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Low-cost approach to collecting electricity

household activity information. The combination of these data reveals new insights into use patters and socio-demographic distribution of electricity use. Instead of focussing on appliances, which are costly and intrusive to monitor individually, METER asks participants ‘what they are doing’. This process costs only a fraction of ‘appliance instrumentation’ approach and can therefore capture thousands of households, where previously only a few tens were feasible. In many instances this approach also affords greater insights. For instance, rather than knowing whether a TV is on or off, METER data shows how many (if any) people were watching it - an important difference when it comes to load shifting. Learn more about how METER will create an evidence base for the potential of load shifting, or even participate in the study yourself. To find out more go to http://www.energy-use.org/.

Principal Investigator: Prof Peter GrindrodCo-investigators: Dr Kathryn Janda, Dr David Wallom, Prof Susan Bright, Prof Malcolm McCulloch, Dr Russell Layberry. Researchers: Julia Patrick, Ramon Granell

A WICKED problemenergy management in the UK retail sector

UK carbon reduction policies urge householders and businesses to consume less energy. Homeowners who choose to manage their energy have many options – they know which appliances they are using, can locate and read their own meters as often as they like, and can often carry out structural alterations without seeking permission. By contrast, shopkeepers and retail landlords face a more complicated energy management situation, sometimes defined as a ‘wicked’ problem in the sense that it resists resolution. Because

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of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a ‘wicked’ problem may reveal or create other problems. Take for example a typical budget shopping centre with almost 100 different shopkeepers – a setting where the range of factors affecting good energy management constitutes a genuinely ‘wicked’ problem. Some of these centres were designed as open malls in 1960s, then roofed over later to provide enclosed communal areas, which the shopkeepers now jointly pay to heat and cool. Older centres such as these face multiple problems: the buildings cannot easily be ‘back-engineered’ for energy efficiency; the energy meters may be archaic and stuck in a basement; the responsibility for energy management has been ‘tacked on’ to job descriptions for people who already have far too much to do; and retailers – many under serious pressure as a result of the economic crisis – are generally not much interested in engaging with issues outside their core business, so landlord-tenant relationships are difficult to build. In such cases it can be almost impossible to decide where to start in tackling issues of energy management – or indeed even to identify anyone who is prepared to take responsibility. Everyone knows they ‘ought’ to be doing something, and would like in principle to reduce overheads by saving energy, but no one knows which bit of the puzzle to solve first, so the tendency is for nothing to change. Landlord-tenant relationships in particular can compound this problem: 50% of commercial buildings are tenanted.

Oxford’s EPSRC-funded WICKED research project (Working with Infrastructure, Creation of Knowledge, and Energy strategy Development) does not claim to provide instant answers – but as Dr Kathryn Janda, the project’s research director puts it, ‘WICKED offers the opportunity to ask questions in many different ways’. Solving the various energy management problems of the retail sector – like the shopping centre described above – requires a highly interdisciplinary approach, and it is this that WICKED aims to provide. In the process it can open up new areas

CC Maxw

ell Hamilton

Shopping centres with many individual tenants are an energy challenge

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A WICKED problem

of enquiry, and seek to understand why existing areas of enquiry are framed the way they are, thus releasing the potential for things to change. Drawing on research expertise in mathematical and computer modelling, energy metering, organisational behaviour, and property law, WICKED can begin to unpick the knots that hinder retail sector energy management. Energy monitors used by Dr Malcolm McCulloch and Dr Russell Layberry, for example, can provide a level of data to suit different organisations. It is generally assumed that ‘more information is always better’, and that enabling organisations to move from being ‘data poor’ to being ‘data rich’ will have automatic and immediate benefits – but it’s critical to start at the right place for the organisation, and both ‘data rich’ and ‘data poor’ organisations face their own challenges. Analytics are also critical; Professor Peter Grindrod, WICKED’s Principal Investigator, and Dr David Wallom are working on the mathematics and machine-learning that underpin the analytics of big data sets. WICKED believes that one size solutions will not fit all. Shaping data and analysis to the needs of different kinds of decision-makers (e.g. landlords, facility managers, shopkeepers, and corporate

financial officers), will enable change to occur. Simply generating information is not enough – instead WICKED aims to create knowledge and foster energy strategy development. One of WICKED’s innovations is to involve a wide range of social science researchers who can bring their expertise to bear on the problem. Among the investigators is Professor Susan Bright from the Faculty of Law, one of the few lawyers to be involved in an EPSRC project. Like Dr Janda, Professor Bright believes that technological solutions can best be made

effective through an understanding of

A WICKED problem

Phone measuring flashing LED

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A WICKED problem

the way that buildings are used and communities behave. She is particularly interested in the landlord-tenant issue and how it may inhibit good practice in energy management. It’s a Catch-22 situation: tenants are unwilling to invest in ‘green’ practices because they will not see the financial benefits within the lifetime of their tenancy, and landlords won’t invest either because the financial return goes to the tenant, and making a building more energy efficient does not necessarily make it more valuable. Professor Bright is investigating how legal frameworks can help or hinder in these situations. Her research focuses on the development of ‘green leases’ and the role they can play in improving energy management and other environmental issues in the tenanted commercial built environment. It’s a slow process; the danger is that ‘green leases’, once drawn up, may just sit on a shelf and never be referred to again – but leases can also facilitate discussion and cooperation around key building management issues that might otherwise never take place. Rather than acting as a purely legal framework, leases can provide a tool for better landlord-tenant relationships - and this can only be beneficial in terms of helping to unpick the big issues like energy management.Bringing together the physical and social sciences in this way is the real strength of WICKED. Energy strategy development, after all, is more complex than counting kilo-Watts; it involves changing a network of people, altering already complex relationships between businesses, and accommodating disparate physical infrastructure, WICKED solutions aim to take these ‘wicked’ problems into account.

www.energy.ox.ac.uk/wicked

What is a ‘green lease’?A green lease works to ensure that tenants and landlords are required to adopt environmentally friendly practices, so that the use and operation of a building minimises the impact on the environment. A green lease contains environmental clauses that may facilitate the reduction of energy, water and raw material consumption, support increased recycling and the use of sustainable materials, and encourage other sustainable practices by both landlord and tenant, such as data sharing.

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www.energy.ox.ac.uk

Providing access to secure, affordable and sustainable energy is one of our biggest challenges in the 21st century. It calls

for a collective effort to address the technical, societal, economic and political issues involved. Oxford is leading on the integration of cross-disciplinary research to foster whole system solutions. NEST@Oxford seeks to bring together DPhil students from different disciplines and complement their doctoral experience with a programme of lectures, seminars, field trips and other engagement activities, which provide context to their thesis topic and widen their perspective on major energy challenges. As part of the programme, small multidisciplinary teams of four to six students will be set real-world challenges, formulated by project partners.

For more information visit www.energy.ox.ac.uk/NEST or contact info@energy.ox.ac.uk

New Energy Systems ThinkersAn innovative interdisciplinary programme for DPhils in energy research

Over 200 senior researchers addressing major technical, social, economic and policy issues