16 minute read
ECOSYSTEM
by TU Delft
that we can’t simply use new hardware without first testing it thoroughly.”
INTEGRATED APPROACH
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Tennet has an important role to play in the energy transition. How can this be accelerated, in Abbenhuis’s view? “We need to look for solutions at system level. Lots of different parties are involved, each with their own specific roles. An integrated approach will be essential in ensuring that the network can change into a European multifunctional connector of a dynamic electricity supply, with controllable demand for energy and a link to storage in molecules and electrons.”
The ESP Lab is the ideal place for developing and testing these innovations to enable them to be successfully integrated. That is what makes the lab an essential link in the successful shift towards a new energy system. “That’s why it makes perfect sense for us to be a partner from the outset.”
“If we want to make a success of the energy transition, we will need to work together: universities, the market, industry, government and the grid operators”, says Abbenhuis. “We have a mammoth task ahead of us in the next twenty years. That’s why we need to continue to nurture our partnership.”
ABOUT TENNET
Tennet is a leading European grid operator, also known as Transmission System Operator or TSO. It designs, builds, maintains and operates the high-voltage network in the Netherlands and large parts of Germany and facilitates the European energy market. Tennet transports electricity across a high-voltage network of around 23,500 km to more than 42 million people. With a staff of more than 5,000, Tennet achieved turnover of € 4.1 billion, and a total asset value of €23 billion in 2019.
PRIVILEGED
“I consider myself privileged to be able to work in a sector that is tasked with completely reinventing itself”, he concludes. “I’m convinced that we’re doing the right things to make the energy transition a reality, in alliance with science. If we are successful in this, we can use that knowledge to ensure that the rest of the world follows suit and that we leave the Earth behind in a better state than we found it.”
Power generation, conversion and storage facilities, grid and microgrid components, power facilities for high, medium and low voltages, and extensive ICT facilities: the ESP Lab is a unique combination of facilities.
TU DELFT IS BUILDING A LOCAL, CO2-FREE ENERGY SYSTEM FOR THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AT THE GREEN VILLAGE
Marjan Kreijns and John Schmitz
The energy transition will be at its most tangible in residential areas, where there are major challenges. Residents will need to refrain from using gas and the increase in heat pumps and renewable, localised energy production is creating problems for the electricity grid. At The Green Village, field lab for sustainable innovation on TU Delft Campus, a unique project has been launched in order to accelerate the energy transition in the built environment: the development of a local CO2-free self-sufficient energy system.
Text: Jurjen Slump O ver recent years, a conventional natural gas network was already set up at The Green Village and was later adapted for hydrogen. Three 1970s-style terraced houses were built in order to research how these homes, which are still very common, can be made more sustainable. There is also an open low-temperature heating grid. There are electric cars that can be used as batteries and the site has access to a DC and AC electricity network.
HUGE STEP FORWARD
All of these projects sowed the seeds for the new 24/7 Energy Lab project: the establishment of a local energy system. The idea behind it is simple, explains Marjan Kreijns, director of The Green Village. “Currently, the built environment accounts for some 35% of energy demand in the Netherlands. If we succeed in making this partially CO2-free, we will be taking a huge step forward in accelerating the energy transition.”
However, the use of renewable energy in making residential areas self-sufficient is not without its challenges. “Demand and supply always need to be
^ Eventually, 24/7 Energy Lab connects all of the buildings and systems at The Green Village >
balanced”, as John Schmitz, the former Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, who is leading the project explains. “Renewable energy causes significant fluctuations: there’s no sunshine at night and the wind can also drop completely. What’s more, most solar energy is generated in the summer, whereas energy demand in buildings peaks in the winter.”
SEASONAL BUFFER
One of the potential solutions involves building up a seasonal buffer to store excess energy generated in the summer for use in winter. This is possible using a battery, with hydrogen or by storing heat in underground wells. “We intend to explore how we can use batteries and hydrogen as storage media”, Schmitz says. When energy exceeds demand, the surplus green energy will partly be stored in batteries and partly used for hydrogen production.
In the event of a shortfall during the day, the batteries can step in immediately and the hydrogen can be converted back into electricity in the winter. The conversion of hydrogen into electricity also releases heat. “We want to see whether we can capture this heat and feed it back into the heating network.” This ties all the projects from recent years together. “We have solar panels, a system for making hydrogen and converting it into electricity, a hydrogen network, an open low-temperature heating grid, an AC and DC electricity network and homes fitted with heat pumps and hydrogen central heating boilers”, Kreijns explains. “This gives us all the ingredients for a ‘smart multicommodity grid’ that connects the different energy carriers – molecules, electrons and heat.”
The hydrogen network and the heating grid were installed in collaboration with grid operators Alliander, Enexis and Stedin. “Of course, we’re also talking to them about this project. They’re very interested in the results.”
SMART MANAGEMENT
The greatest technological challenge involves linking together all of these components and managing them. Electricity, gas and heat now flow through the street separately, but that is set to change. A stable, sustainable energy system will require convergence between electricity, hydrogen and heat, with specific possibilities for buffering each of these. “You will need transformers in order to connect solar panels, which supply direct current, to an alternating current network”, Schmitz explains.
Schematic representation of 24/7 Energy Lab. The project starts with the construction of a simple basic system.
Solar PV Household
Water tank
Source: Wintersol Renewable Energy Storage, edited by Iris Jönsthövel.
Electrolyser Compressor Hydrogen storage Fuel cell Battery Grid
Electricity Hydrogen Heat Water
Fuel cells for the consumption of hydrogen produce a low-voltage direct current, which means you also need another converter for that. “How all this will work in practice is not at all clear at the moment. That is what we intend to research at this point in time.”
The same applies to its management. “Does it make sense to produce hydrogen all day long or is the opposite the case? And how much energy can you store in batteries or heat buffers? Within two years, we aim to develop an Energy Management System (EMS) that makes the right choices. The whole system will be packed full of sensors and all of the data will be collected on the data platform of The Green Village. The data can then be used to optimise the system.
UPSCALING
The project is starting on a small scale: the capacity of the basic system is sufficient to meet the energy needs of a student house. After that, all of the buildings and systems at The Green Village will be connected and the electric vehicles (using one’s own car as a battery), the solar panels and possibly small wind turbines will then come into play. All of this will be integrated in this autonomous network with the help of the EMS.
This will be an important step: The 24/7 Energy Lab must demonstrate how these technologies can be scaled up affordably. This is why commercially available components are being used, to enable rapid upscaling. Schmitz expects it to take around two years before the EMS is fully up-and-running and at least five years until the whole Green Village is self-sufficient.
It will then be possible to consider further upscaling, connecting up entire residential areas. When that becomes a reality, it will have the added advantage of taking the pressure off the electricity grid, because energy will be locally generated and consumed on a large-scale. “Electricity consumption will increase
significantly as a result of the energy transition”, says Schmitz. “There is already an awful lot of congestion on the grid.”
SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
The technological aspects are just half of the story. “The energy transition is actually a massive social experiment”, says Kreijns. “For example, who owns this locally generated energy? What happens if your neighbour switches on the fuel cell to produce electricity? Who pays for that and how will it be calculated?” Residents are quite willing to participate in the energy transition, provided it does not cause them too much hassle. “We intend to show that it’s possible to ensure that there is always sufficient energy, in a smart and sustainable way, without residents being inconvenienced.”
The Green Village will hold a unique position, as a living lab. There are currently twelve people living on the terrain, and their experience as consumers will be extremely valuable in developing a user-friendly system. “This will be an energy lab with real people. That’s what makes it unique. It’s going to teach us an awful lot.”
ENERGY SWITCH
Any large-scale application of energy self-sufficient districts will also require action on the part of politicians. There are still plenty of legal restrictions, especially concerning the use of hydrogen. “Legislation on heating, electricity and gas is lagging behind the technology”, says Kreijns. “There is a real need for politics in The Hague to provide more room for manoeuvre when it comes to developing innovations.” There is also a significant lack of qualified staff looming. “We will be facing shortages across all sectors: among the grid operators, installation companies, manufacturers of solar panels and heat pumps”. This is why TU Delft and The Green Village have established the Energy Switch programme, with a view to making the labour market in Zuid-Holland energy transition proof. A range of players in ZuidHolland are joining forces in Energy Switch to achieve more effective coordination of demand, supply and training and retraining.
DELTA WORKS
The major ambitions and challenges that the energy transition brings for the urban environment all come together in the 24/7 Energy Lab. If proven a success, the Netherlands will also benefit as a country. “If, as a nation, we effectively focus on the development of the hardware or business models associated with this kind of system, it could bring economic prosperity as well”, anticipates Schmitz. “As a task, you might compare it to the Delta Works, but this time in the field of energy.”
TECH FOR ENERGY
SPEEDING UP THE ENERGY TRANSITION
Delft University Fund supports TU Delft by contributing to research, education and talent development. With the support of our alumni and others, we help our students to develop ambitious ideas, our scientists to bring their research excellence to society and our teachers to pass on the Prometheus flame of knowledge in the classroom and beyond. With Tech for Energy, a campaign marking TU Delft’s 180th anniversary year, we aim to support excellent Delft scientists in their research and endeavors toward speeding up the energy transition in the Netherlands.
The 24/7 Energy Lab is an innovative and smart, local energy system for the built environment. Together this could result in a 35% reduction in the final energy consumption in the Netherlands. For this, we will engage and combine the latest know-how and innovations of TU Delft and other partners. We will test existing and new technologies in the unique living lab ‘The Green Village’. While doing so, we will also look explicitly at affordability, acceptance and regulations.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT DELFT UNIVERSITY FUND
Please contact us or visit our website: www.tudelft.nl/techforenergy | ufonds@tudelft.nl | +31 (0) 15 278 64 09
Delft University Fund has ANBI status (organisation serving the public interest). Your donation may therefore be tax deductible.
Prof.dr. John Schmitz
WILL YOU HELP?
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Mattijs Slee (left) and Fokko Mulder
24 Currently, storage is the key issue holding back the energy transition. Professor Fokko Mulder and CEO Mattijs Slee from Battolyser Systems are within reach of the solution: the Battolyser is a battery and a hydrogen factory in one. The TU Delft spin-off is a textbook example of how to create impact from research.
Text: Agaath Diemel I t is a familiar problem: the production of solar and wind farms varies throughout the day and across the seasons. In order to cope with these fluctuations, demand for storage is set to increase enormously. This is why Professor of Energy Storage Fokko Mulder embarked on his quest for alternatives for the ubiquitous lithium battery several years ago. A potential candidate was the nickel-iron battery, originally discovered by Edison, but never a commercial success. One of the reasons: when this kind of battery is being charged, water is electrolysed, producing hydrogen and oxygen. “For a long time, that hydrogen was seen as an undesirable by-product, but the energy transition has now transformed that disadvantage into an advantage. Instead of attempting to reduce the production of hydrogen, it became much more interesting to deliberately split that water”, explains Mulder.
This is the idea behind the Battolyser: an integrated appliance that serves as a battery for day- and nighttime storage and starts to produce hydrogen when it is full. Hydrogen can be used for long-term storage, as a fuel or as an interim stage in the production of raw materials such as ammonia. “So, it’s a single device that replaces two. What also makes it so special is that the materials remain very stable when switching between the different functions: charging and discharging the
battery and the electrolysis.” In addition, nickel and iron are very plentiful and conflict-free materials. “A gift from mother nature”, is what Mulder calls it. “In the context of the energy transition, this combination of materials turns out to have a unique set of characteristics. It is sublime in its simplicity.”
UPSCALING TO SERIAL PRODUCTION
The prototype for Mulder’s lab has now been upscaled to a pilot unit the size of several households. “Next year, it will be installed at Vattenfall in order to demonstrate that the technology is also effective in an industrial setting”, explains Mattijs Slee, CEO of Battolyser Systems. Serious efforts are also being made to upscale the capacity, firstly by developing a commercial demonstration unit and then advancing to production capacity. Each stage will involve new issues relating to efficiency, feasibility and affordability. “The pilot is about proving that it works, but if it’s to be upscaled for commercial use, it will also need to be efficient, affordable and reliable. The phase after that will be commercial serial production, when we as a company will need to be able to earn money on every unit.”
That means that the current focus is on a lot of R&D, but as it becomes increasingly commercialised, Battolyser Systems will begin to attract more capital. “There’s a lot of interest in the market. The trick will be in the timing: if you act to early, it will be too expensive, but leave it too late and you’ll impede growth”, says Slee. Slee knows what he is talking about: before joining Battolyser Systems, he was responsible for investments in non-fossil fuel and raw materials applications at Shell Ventures. In addition, this young company has Kees Koolen, CEO of the clean energy conglomerate Koolen Industries, as a major shareholder. “He’s a seasoned venture capitalist and is advising us on these issues.”
FRUITFUL ALLIANCE
TU Delft has invested in Battolyser Systems via Delft Enterprises and is remaining closely involved in the spin-off. It is a fruitful alliance for both parties. “At Delft Enterprises, they have a lot of experience in start-ups and the issues they face, which they can translate into advice for us”, says Slee. “They are part of our Board of Commissioners and, as shareholders, they see to it that their investment thrives.” But financial gain is only part of the story: “The Battolyser will enable TU Delft to make a very concrete contribution to the energy transition.” In other words: impact for a better society, as the university’s mission states.
Battolyser Pilot Stack 15KWh/KW. Credits: Battolyser Systems
Mulder and Slee are very optimistic about the Battolyser’s prospects. “Everyone is determined to make it work. IMPACT Our company, TU Delft and also the government. The Netherlands wants to play an important role in the energy transition, but we don’t yet have any companies that manufacture electrolysers in the Netherlands. We’re helping to plug that gap”, says Slee. He also envisages opportunities outside the Netherlands. Mulder: “Our device will very quickly be able to compete with separate devices for energy storage and hydrogen production, which also require materials that are difficult to source. This has potential on a global scale. The whole world actually faces the same problem. Wind and solar energy farms will struggle to use the energy they generate on a daily basis. If you want to accelerate the energy transition, you need to resolve that increasing demand for storage.”
The Battolyser also does that in a unique way. “The Battolyser not only allows you to store the surplus and sell it at a time that’s favourable, you can also serve the hydrogen market in the process,” says Mulder. Slee: “It’s an unusual combination of a battery that never gets full and an electrolyser that can switch just as quickly as a battery. This is the first time that fluctuating renewable electricity generation can be linked economically to society’s energy demand.
This is a key to the energy transition that we never had before.”
