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Ulster University’s Inna Vorushylo discusses the role of energy storage
Decarbonisation: The role of energy storage
Policy and regulatory support for energy storage is needed to enable the energy transition in Northern Ireland, says Ulster University’s Inna Vorushylo.
Highlighting the three main transitional pathways to net zero carbon identified in Northern Ireland’s long-term Energy Strategy of electricity, transport and buildings, the lecturer in energy markets and storage believes that energy storage will play a key role across all pathways and sectors in the transition to a net zero energy system.
The potential benefits of storage to the electricity sector include providing renewable generation variability management, system stability and reliability through ancillary service provision, and security of supply via diversification and improving affordability. By energy storage Vorushylo refers to a wide range of storage technologies, including electrical, thermal storage and demand side response provision among others. As, Vorushylo points out, energy storage will have an enabling role in the envisaged decentralisation of the power grid which will be needed for net zero.
Outlining why greater levels of energy storage will be required, the academic points to the existing challenges associated with the variability of renewables, predominantly wind generation, and the difficulty for the system operator to accurately forecast levels occasionally.
“Energy storage can help to quickly synchronise renewables into the system, while also helping to minimise the impact of variability on the system and minimise the process for the consumer,” she says.
While acknowledging that energy storage is not the full solution to addressing rising gas prices, the academic believes that greater capacity will help minimise peak energy prices and will form a critical part of stronger interconnection across different countries envisaged for the future.
“Additionally, with increased levels of renewable generators and a move towards a more decentralised energy system, significant investment in infrastructure will be required. Energy storage can assist a lot in this transition by optimising infrastructural costs and providing system services at various levels.”
Heat and transport
Electrification will play a central role in the decarbonisation of the heat and transport sectors and energy storage can bring benefits including a reduction of impact on the electricity system, with peak demand reduction providing flexibility to the system and supporting consumers to actively participate in the market.
Research carried out by Ulster University to help inform the preEnergy Strategy consultation shows that through the high electrification scenario for heat and transport, peak demand could increase by 60 per cent by 2050 compared to 2018 levels. “By providing the opportunity for flexible demand-side response, storage can significantly minimise the impact of emerging technologies on the system,” she explains.
An example provided by Vorushylo in relation to heat centres is an understanding that years with the lowest available wind profile in Northern Ireland often coincide with the coldest years. Air source heat pumps, while recognised as positive technologies, reduce in performance when the temperature decreases. “Again, energy storage, especially long-duration energy storage and demand-side measures, can help minimise this effect on the system,” she states.
Alongside a high electrification scenario, the university’s research also analyses a high gasification scenario, as well as a hybrid scenario. In both these scenarios, hydrogen has a major role but as the academic acknowledges, the infrastructure required to generate a future hydrogen economy is not yet in place.
“The main missing piece of the puzzle is energy storage,” she asserts. “The critical role of hydrogen and carbon storage in a hydrogen economy has been widely acknowledged across Europe. In Northern Ireland there is hydrogen storage potential for Northern Ireland through the Islandmagee storage project, and this is in the context that the UK
has one of the lowest levels of current natural gas storage in Europe. In Northern Ireland carbon storage sites are not easily available and so we need to invest in new hydrogen infrastructure or medium storage facilities.”
Highlighting that Northern Ireland can learn from existing exemplars, Vorushylo says that while pumped hydro storage technologies continue to dominate global energy storage power capacity, the role of battery storage and thermal energy storage is growing.
Barriers
Turning to the barriers for energy storage implementation in the market, the academic highlights that energy policy and regulation has been a long-standing barrier to storage development but outlines prioritisation of storage in a number of recent UK-level strategies and planning easements which indicate positive movement in this area.
Cost is another identified long-standing barrier but while energy storage technologies remain in the early stage of development and so are capital intensive, projections suggest large future reductions, with the academic highlighting that cost reductions are already evident.
Unlocking demand side potential can significantly improve peak demand reduction and, as result, contribute to price reduction, lowering fuel poverty and managing gas crisis in Northern Ireland.
On how much energy storage would be required for Northern Ireland, Vorushylo says that no straightforward answer exists, instead indicating that the optimal level of storage will be dictated by manufactures and a range of factors ranging from the future carbon price to the policy direction for EV penetration. However, existing research from other countries indicates a strong trend whereby higher penetration of renewables correlates with a requirement for greater energy storage.
Vorushylo contends that critical to the future of energy storage will be the investment viability for these technologies. Launched at COP26, the Long Duration Energy Storage Council forecasts the requirements for 85 to 140 TWh of energy storage by 2040 to achieve net carbon energy system globally. Members of the council, which include the likes of BP and Siemens, have called for as much as $3 trillion of investment into long duration energy storage to give the global power system the flexibility necessary to achieve net zero emissions by 2040.
“I believe such a push puts fresh emphasis on governments to create environments of the right policies and regulatory frameworks to attract this investment into their countries and regions.”
Concluding, the academic says: “Energy storage technology is a vital group of technologies, and the role of energy storage has been more widely recognised across the UK and in Northern Ireland. While energy storage is a global enabler, it is clear that policy and regulatory support for energy storage in Northern Ireland is needed to enable the energy transition.”
Flexible demand ‘urgently needed’
Northern Ireland “urgently needs to empower consumers” by developing its “untapped energy resource”, flexible demand, a report funded by the Department for the Economy has stated.
There is overall a “serious mismatch between variability and flexibility in the Northern Ireland power system”, the report by Ulster University’s Patrick Keatley found, with Northern Ireland having a “highly distributed and variable energy supply, managed by highly centralised and relatively inflexible resources”. A lack of market access for consumer resources was found to result in the wastage of clean local energy and the over-procurement of and over-reliance on investor-owned fossil capacity.
The rollout of smart meters is thus cited as a “critical building block” towards enabling smart energy systems and allowing consumers to create and monetise value through flexible energy demand, and although the rollout of such technology has been “problematic in some countries”, the need for real-time and two-way communication on this front remains.
Northern Ireland is deemed to be an ideal place for such deployment due, in part, to its high proportion of variable renewable energy (VRE).
It is not just the scale of VRE capacity that marks Northern Ireland’s network apart, but also the low-density and dispersed population meaning that it has a disproportionate high level of low-voltage network connected to homes and businesses in remote areas. Northern Ireland thus has over twice the amount of transmission and distribution infrastructure per head of population when compared to Britain, 58 metres of wire per customer compared to Britain’s 28 metres per customer. Almost all of this network is lower voltage.
This means that almost all VRE resources in Northern Ireland are connected at these lower distribution voltages, meaning that windfarms are on average much smaller than windfarms elsewhere, resulting in “highly decentralised and variable generation, which compounds an already variable (or ‘peaky’) demand profile, largely shaped by domestic consumer demand”. However, despite the success of connecting high levels of VRE, flexibility is still “largely limited” to the dynamic operation of fossil generators.
A lack of other supply-side resources, e.g., interconnection, “most notably the seemingly interminable delay to construction of the North-South Interconnector”, as well as a failure to deploy significant levels of consumerside flexibility “has resulted in a highly inefficient system”. Such an inability to provide flexible demand has led to the dumping of indigenous renewable energy.
These low levels of flexibility also mean that, on top of periods of overgeneration, there are periods of undergeneration. Four amber alerts were issued by SONI during the winter of 2020/2021 due to high demand amidst low wind availability. It is noted by Keatley that “no consumer-side resources like critical peak reduction tariffs exist to allow consumers to contribute to (and be rewarded for) system management at such times of stress”.
Keatley’s research has also found that the failure to develop flexible resources has led to increased capacity payments for fossil fuel generations, with current system planning rules meaning that the continued absence of the North-South Interconnector multiplies the value of new fossil generation at auction.
From this situation, Keatley makes the following recommendations: establish flexible demand as an asset class; design from the bottom up when rolling out smart technologies such as smart meters; prioritise low-income households, particularly the 120,000 social homes in Northern Ireland; monetise the capacity value of energy efficiency by allowing energy efficiency to compete against traditional fossil generation assets in auctions; consider the circular economy; exploit synergies in Northern Ireland through harnessing the power of the local IT industry to develop smart technologies and by deploying these technologies at scale through the large public sector; invest in smart networks; establish new ways of collecting, analysing, and sharing data; and recognise locational value.
Adopting this approach, as Keatley points out, would align with the UK Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy’s Smart Meter Policy Framework Post-2020.
Turning policy into action
Energy Saving Trust is an independent organisation dedicated to promoting energy efficiency, low carbon transport and sustainable energy use. We aim to address the climate emergency and deliver the wider benefits of clean energy as the UK transitions to net zero.
In the wake of the IPCC’s latest report into the impacts of climate change, it is more important than ever that politicians continue to show leadership in this area. There are three key issues that we believe should be addressed in Northern Ireland:
Fabric first energy efficiency
A “fabric first” approach is an essential element of any retrofit investment programme. Creating a more energy efficient house requires both behavioural changes and possible retrofit upgrades which could include switching to a low carbon heating system, such as a heat pump, topping up insulation, installing energy efficient windows or investing in smart heating controls. We know through our work with local financial institutions that effective energy modelling can also help improve energy efficiency. This approach runs, tests and models’ different scenarios to find the most effective energy investment solution.
Renewables integration and opportunities
Northern Ireland has an excellent potential for growth and integration of renewable energy. It is already having a profound effect on the electricity sector and there are plans in place to double generation by 2030. Significant challenges remain. Key to solving these will be the roll out of smart meters and development of flexible tariff options to match energy consumption to periods of abundant energy, enabling various storage options. At Energy Saving Trust, we believe that heat pumps are a key part of the solution for homes that are off the gas grid, as well as an attractive and increasingly cost-effective option thanks to their efficiency. A Craigavon firm with aims to drive down costs of heat pumps recently attracted significant investment from a major UK utility, and with local manufacture, access to and awareness of this technology should improve. More businesses such as ‘The Electric Storage Company’ are emerging and providing flexibility services, energy storage, and data acquisition and our EV network is expanding significantly which will enable a wider transition to renewable energy. Use of our modern gas network for biomethane injection and hydrogen studies will also indicate possible further opportunities.
Fuel poverty
A just transition to a decarbonised economy is vital. With 43,800 households in Northern Ireland considered to be in extreme fuel poverty prior to recent cost increases, the situation is worsening. Energy Saving Trust is the Programme Administrator of the Northern Ireland Sustainable Energy Programme (NISEP) on behalf of the Utility Regulator. The programme oversees an £8 million fund, 80 per cent of which is dedicated to supporting vulnerable customers, improving the energy efficiency of the existing housing stock and reducing energy bills for many householders.
Huge challenges and opportunities exist for our new Assembly members, and we will continue to advocate for policy development aimed at a just transition to a net zero society.
For more Information please visit www.est.org.uk
Robert McCreery Policy Officer Energy Saving Trust E: Robert.McCreery@est.org.uk
Simplifying governance for the energy transition
Richard Lowes, Senior Associate at the Regulatory Assistance Project and researcher on the University of Exeter’s report on energy governance in Northern Ireland for the decarbonisation transition, discusses simplifying the complex governance of energy in Northern Ireland in order to guarantee the quick adoption of energy efficiency.
Calling Northern Ireland’s current energy governance structure “extremely complex”, Lowes points to the fact that building control, a key tenet of transition governance, is connected in some way to almost every government department. Transport faces a similar problem, and Lowes also notes that it “opens up wider questions around legal authority” due to the fact that the Executive would require an agreement from Westminster should it attempt to change the local tax regime for petrol or diesel vehicles.
“This isn’t to say that it is any less complicated for the UK Government but it goes to show that if you want a coherent policy, which is what is needed at a time of rapid transformation, this complexity may make life difficult,” he says. “It is very complex; possibly too complex.”
Coherence and complexity were cited as the top issue hamstringing energy transition governance in the interviews conducted as part of Lowes’s research on energy governance in Northern Ireland. Commissioned by the Northern Ireland Executive, “with the complexity of the different organisations involved and the relationships between them meaning that coming up with a specific programme could become quite complicated”. Concerns over leadership and where the responsibility for the energy transition lies sprang from this. With the research conducted in 2020 and published in 2021, Lowes does caveat that there have been developments in the past year with the publication of an energy strategy, but states: “Nonetheless, even with stakeholder engagement, it is not clear if there is an owner for certain issues and without an owner, you are unlikely to get the transformative policy that you need in time to meet goals for decarbonisation.”
Lowes remarks that his reported concerns over lack of capacity and expertise are now being addressed but does point out that concerns over a lack of whole-system thinking remains due to the siloed nature of the work being performed.
There was unanimous support among interviewees for a simplification of the decision-making process involved in the energy transition, and there was also seen to be “a need for better energy leadership” and an updating of the Utility Regulator’s statutory duties to reflect the need for decarbonisation, which clash with its requirement to expand the gas system. Reform suggestions arrived at via the research include: the incorporation of many energy and climate policy issues into one government department; the founding of an oversight body similar to SEAI in the Republic with responsibility for programme deliverance; the adoption of a Northern Ireland carbon budget, with the UK’s Committee on Climate Change providing advice; and placing a duty on all departments to consider climate and energy transition as part of their policy development.
Sounding an optimistic but cautious note, Lowes concludes: “Northern Ireland is very well placed to benefit from the energy transition and from decarbonisation in general owing to its potentially excellent renewable energy resource and the way it might be able to leapfrog some of the issues we are facing in the UK around the gas grid. Significant energy governance reform could drive that. We caution that if this doesn’t take place there is a real risk that the economic benefits of energy transition won’t be realised and goals for decarbonisation will be missed.”
Renewable generation and electricity consumption 2021
Published by the Department for the Economy (DfE) in March 2022, Electricity Consumption and Renewable Generation in Northern Ireland: Year ending December 2021 outlines the percentage of electricity consumption in Northern Ireland generated from renewable energy sources and the type of renewable generation deployed. The report benchmarks renewable energy generation against Path to Net Zero Energy objectives, which include “meet[ing] at least 70 pet cent of electricity consumption from a diverse mix of renewable sources by 2030”.
Renewable electricity generation by source of generation, January to December 2021 (%)
6.8 1.6 0.6
5.1 3.9
82.1 Wind Biomass Landfill gas Biogas Solar PV Other (including hydro and CHP)
Main findings
According to data provided to DfE by NIE Networks, in 2021, the total volume of electricity consumed in Northern Ireland was 7,574 GWh. From January to December 2021, 41.3 per cent of total electricity consumption in Northern Ireland, or 3,131 GWh, was generated from renewable sources. However, this represents a 7.9 percentage point decrease on the previous year (January to December 2020).
Of the total renewable electricity generated in Northern Ireland during 2021, 82.1 per cent was generated from wind, compared with 84.9 per cent in 2020. The 2021 wind proportion figure represents a record low.
Meanwhile, only 560.7 GWh, or less than one-fifth, of renewable electricity generation came from non-wind sources that year. These figures refer to electricity generated from renewable energy sources physically located in Northern Ireland, as record by NIE Networks and SONI. It does not include microgeneration, non-export generating stations, or imported electricity.
As such, the decrease in the proportion of electricity consumed from renewable energy sources in 2021 largely correlates with lower wind speeds and therefore reduced winder generation during the year. Consequently, as a result of several facts, including weather and the creation of new renewable generation facilities, renewable electricity generation varies greatly from month to month.
That being said, non-wind renewable generation volumes have increased by 62 per cent, from 354.6 GWh in 2016 to 560.7 GWh in 2021. However, the greatest growth (46 per cent) in nonwind renewable volumes was experienced between December 2016 and December 2018, followed by smaller growth (11 per cent) in nonwind renewable volumes between December 2018 and December 2021.
A science-led approach to the development of geothermal energy in Northern Ireland
NI Geothermal Advisory Committee members at the building site of new QUB Management School in the process of installing geothermal technology.
The potential of geothermal energy to reach the (NI) Climate Change Bill (No.2) emissions targets through its direct use as a low carbon energy source is acknowledged in the Northern Ireland Executive’s Energy Strategy Pathway to Net Zero. A geothermal energy demonstrator is included in the Department for the Economy’s (DfE) Energy Action Plan.
Setting the scene
In December 2020, GSNI started a national conversation on geothermal energy in a conference co-hosted with the Centre for Sustainable Energy and Climate Action at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) which attracted 308 delegates.
Momentum
Throughout 2021, GSNI and QUB hosted a monthly webinar series featuring guest geothermal experts. Due to popular demand, another year of monthly seminars is underway in 2022. All webinars are available to view in YouTube.
GSNI chairs the Geothermal Advisory Committee (GAC) which meets monthly since it was established in July 2021; one of the GAC’s first tasks was to review a new report by Dr Rob Raine and Derek Reay on the Geothermal energy potential in Northern Ireland: summary and recommendations for the Geothermal Advisory Committee.
Geothermal heating flagship project
A new 6,500m2 building at the Queen’s Management School at Riddel Hall, Stranmillis Road, Belfast is being built which is adopting geothermal technology. The Low Carbon Report, part of the RIBA Stage 3 design process, proved to be critical in its adoption. Economic models and cost calculations were not the primary drivers, but rather the longerterm growth and expansion prospects, coupled with a life cycle analysis of the building informed the decision.
#NIGeothermalWeek
GSNI and QUB are co-hosting several events during #NIGeothermalWeek from 13-17 June 2022.
The main event is a geothermal conference on 13 June at Queen’s Management School. 120 delegates attending in person will hear from invited keynote speakers. In roundtables they will also discuss and feedback on recommendations for geothermal market sector development.
The public are invited to join an online panel discussion and submit questions on 15 June at 7.30pm.
It is hoped that these activities will further inform and sustain the momentum of interest in geothermal energy in Northern Ireland.
Dr Marie Cowan Director, GSNI Dundonald House, Belfast, BT4 3SB E: marie.cowan@economy-ni.gov.uk
“There was a collective ambition for the best possible outcome for all with Riddel Hall. We normally work to pre-set BREEAM standards however, with Riddel we were looking beyond that… Incorporating the geothermal solution into the building at an early stage was key”.
Damien Toner | Director of Estates | Building Surveyor | Queen’s University Belfast
“From our side, there is long-term stability. That is, our heat costs on that part of the estate remain constant and will not change for the next 100 years”.
Jacqueline Kearns | Estates Manager | Quantity Surveyor, Queen’s University Belfast
