Community Energy Literature Review

Market framework for local energy trading: a review of potential designs and market clearing approaches Mohsen Khorasany, Yateendra Mishra, and Gerard Ledwich, 2018, IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution This review paper contains over a hundred references to various aspects of its topic, and the principal aim of this post is to identify those which are at present available on open access. The paper is presented in the following sections, each of which is followed here by the reference numbers in the original. Introduction [2, 6, 7, 8] Local Energy Trading [17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23] Market Players [47, 63, 72, 73, 78, 89] Optimization objective [37, 38, 50, 51, 52, 53, 60, 72, 73, 78, 90] Overview of different market clearing approaches [98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109] Discussion and analysis [112] Conclusions and future works References: [2] A tale of two visions: Designing a decentralized tr...

How to support fuel-efficient driving? (2018) by Ekaterina Gilman et al.  published in IET Intelligent Transport Systems doi: 10.1049/iet-its.2016.0280    There are many ways in which the emissions from road transport can be reduced. An appropriate initial choice of vehicle, together with suitable maintenance, may be thought of as a strategic decision. This paper concentrates on tactics and operation; issues of route selection and driver behaviour, and in particular the technical systems available to inform them.    The authors acknowledge that cultivating sustainable change in driving behaviour is difficult, and that this needs to be reflected in the design of any form of technical assistance. (Readers may notice points in this study which are analogous to issues in other areas of energy saving, such as domestic heating). The paper reviews the literature on driving assistance systems, and notes some general points. Feedback to the driver o...

Some earlier posts referred to the importance of improving the thermal efficiency of existing buildings in order to reduce carbon emissions associated with heating. Retrofit 2050 concentrated on methods of measuring the thermal performance of buildings when the thermal properties of the materials used are unknown. Retrofit of buildings: citations and extracts referred to recent work on improving methods of thermal measurement. Energy Efficiency in Buildings provided links to energy performance standards. Many papers on thermal measurement focus on assessing the U-values of existing structures. Standard methods involve the use of both temperature and heat-flow measurements and are typically time-consuming and demanding. Effort has been directed to reducing the difficulties and producing quicker results, in some cases by eliminating the need for heat flow measurement. Reducing measurement time without loss of accuracy remains a goal. The infrared thermograph...

The link between ownership of electric cars in the UK and the provision of charging facilities is explored in the following articles. This is Money, 23 February 2017, reported that the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) made £1 million available to fund installations during the current financial year and an additional £1.5 million for 2017/18. Residents who want one of the twin charge points added on their street need to ask their local authority to take up their case, funding then being allocated on a first-come first-served basis. See: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-4245190/How-electric-car-charge-point-street.html A BBC news article on charging EVs ( February 2018 ) opened with the question “What if you live in a flat?” The option of ask ing the local authority to install a street charg ing point is described, OLEV ha ving set aside £4.5m to support such applications over the next two years, and offering to pay up to 75% of the costs of ins...

Hydrogen and tidal energy by Neil Kermode (2017) (IET Engineering and Technology Reference, pp. 1–10, doi:10.1049/etr.2016.0163) Kermode analyses renewable energy in the Orkney Islands, where production exceeds the needs of the local population. The situation of the islands provides abundant energy from wind, wave, and tidal stream [1]. The paper concentrates on tidal production, the output of energy from underwater turbines, and the development of strategies to utilize it. Tidal flow fluctuates due to the rotation of the earth and the movement of the moon in its orbit. The daily ebb and flow of the tides gives peaks in water speed at roughly twelve hour intervals, but these peaks are greatest on the ‘spring tides’ which occur at intervals of approximately fourteen days, and least on the intervening ‘neap tides’. The power produced by tidal stream turbines increases as the cube of water velocity. No power is generated during those hours when there is negligible movement of...

Hydrogen in a low-carbon economy was published by the Committee on Climate Change in November 2018  It is available at https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/hydrogen-in-a-low-carbon-economy/ Its scope is indicated by its section headings, which are: Hydrogen for heat in buildings and industry Hydrogen use elsewhere in the energy system Hydrogen supply Scenarios for hydrogen use Energy system cost implications, and Conclusions and recommendations. This post addresses only the penultimate paragraph of the report (p.126): “ Further work is required to establish whether and to what degree hydrogen acts as an indirect greenhouse gas if emitted to atmosphere.” Some discussions around the effects of hydrogen emissions are to be found in an earlier publication HyCARE Hydrogen Energy Chances and Risks for the Environment Proceedings of the first HyCARE meeting, Hamburg, 16-17 December 2004, available at https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_994975_6/co...

Mary Robinson spoke recently in Bristol on the subject of Climate Justice. One of the points she made was that the motivation to take action on environmental issues is likely to come through narrative rather than from a logical appeal to facts.  Narrative in relation to sustainability has been examined from many angles. The narratives of individual households with commitments to sustainable living, and their relation to transition movements and to technological narratives are examined in the following paper. Transitions on the home front: A story of sustainable living beyond ecoefficiency Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 31, September 2017, Pages 240-248 Pernilla Hagberta, Karin Bradley (2017) Open Access The authors state that a “prevailing discourse in sustainable housing tends to focus on building performance, along with compelling stories of “green” lifestyles and attractive urban housing concepts, while avoiding storylines that suggest more profound c...