Projects
Our research projects cover a variety of sustainable engineering areas.
Current projects
TABEDE
To fully realize the European Demand Response potential, building must enter Demand Response schemes and expose all available flexibilities, including HVAC and thermal inertia, to the aggregator. However, several existing limitations need to be overcome:
- Interoperability and communication: A variety of communication technologies, protocols and data models are used in building automation and energy management systems and numerous smart grid standards exist.
- Cost: it is often cheaper to install a new BMS than to spend time and money to adapt an existing BMS.
- Functionality: Current BMSs do not support demand response applications out of the box. Moreover, market-ready interoperable solutions do not exist that considers DR potential of thermal inertia and comfort-related systems in buildings.
TABEDE aims to allowing all buildings to integrate energy grid demand response schemes through a low cost extender for BMS systems or as standalone system, which is independent of communication standards and integrate innovative flexibility algorithms.
Demand Response Integration tEchnologies: Unlocking the demand response potential in the distribution grid
It is widely recognised that increasing flexibility is key for the reliable operation of future power systems with very high penetration levels of Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES). Flexibility is the ability of a power system to maintain continuous service in the face of rapid and large swings in supply or demand. The most significant source of flexibility in a future scenario with high penetration of VRES is Demand Response (DR). The new challenge is to unlock the very high potential of DR in the distribution grid where the main sources of flexibility are the residential and tertiary buildings, representing 70% of the total DR potential.
Demand Response Integration tEchnologies (DRIvE) will unlock the Demand Response potential of residential and tertiary buildings in the distribution grid through a comprehensive platform the seamlessly existing assets and buildings to achieve optimal operations in the next generation Smart Grids, paving the way to a fully deployed DR market in the distribution network.
BIMEET: BIM Energy Efficiency Training
BIMEET aims to establish a BIM based EU-wide standardised qualification framework for energy efficiency framework. BIMEET will address some of the challenges facing the construction sector as they work towards achieving increasingly ambitious energy efficiency objectives, as well as using the latest digital technology for Building Information Modelling (BIM).
More about the BIMEET project.
Images and a summary of the BIM platform can be viewed below:
PENTAGON: Unlocking European grid local flexibility through augmented energy conversion capabilities at district level
PENTAGON aims at paving the way to a new generation of eco-districts , leveraging on enhanced energy systems, and a high level integrated management platform simultaneously acting on different energy carriers (thermal, gas and electric).
THERMOSS: Building and district thermal retrofit and management solutions
THERMOSS aims to produce an outstanding contribution to the wider deployment of advanced building heating and cooling technologies in the EU, with a view to significantly enhance energy efficiency of residential buildings and to facilitate their connection to district heating and cooling networks.
REACH: Assessing and enhancing building resilience in response to post-earthquake landslides in China
Understanding how communities recover from landslides associated with large earthquakes will be the subject of a new NERC-funded collaboration between Cardiff University’s Sustainable Places Research Institute, BRE Trust Centre for Sustainable Construction and the Chengdu Institute of Technology-State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection
piSCES: Smart Cluster Energy System for the fish processing industry
piSCES objective is to reduce the cost and carbon footprint of Energy Networks in the fish processing industry by implementing smart grid technologies. This will be done through modelling the usage profile of their energy network and optimising that against the wholesale energy market and any available onsite generation.