This publication gives a different take on energy and energy transition. Energy goes beyond technology. Energy systems are about people: embedded in political orders and cultural institutions, shaped by social consumers and advocacy coalitions, and interconnected with changing parameters and new local and global markets. An overview and explanation of the three end states have been extracted from the original publication and appear in the first chapter. The second chapter consists of an analysis exploring key drivers of change until 2050, giving special attention to the role of international politics, social dynamics and high-impact ideas. The third chapter explores a case study of Power to Gas to illustrate how the development of new technologies could be shaped by regulatory systems, advocacy coalitions and other functions identified in the ‘technology innovation systems’ model. The fourth chapter explores the case of Energy Valley to understand how local or regional energy systems respond to drivers of change, based on their contextual factors and systems dynamics.
This publication gives a different take on energy and energy transition. Energy goes beyond technology. Energy systems are about people: embedded in political orders and cultural institutions, shaped by social consumers and advocacy coalitions, and interconnected with changing parameters and new local and global markets. An overview and explanation of the three end states have been extracted from the original publication and appear in the first chapter. The second chapter consists of an analysis exploring key drivers of change until 2050, giving special attention to the role of international politics, social dynamics and high-impact ideas. The third chapter explores a case study of Power to Gas to illustrate how the development of new technologies could be shaped by regulatory systems, advocacy coalitions and other functions identified in the ‘technology innovation systems’ model. The fourth chapter explores the case of Energy Valley to understand how local or regional energy systems respond to drivers of change, based on their contextual factors and systems dynamics.
Renewable energy sources have an intermittent character that does not necessarily match energy demand. Such imbalances tend to increase system cost as they require mitigation measures and this is undesirable when available resources should be focused on increasing renewable energy supply. Matching supply and demand should therefore be inherent to early stages of system design, to avoid mismatch costs to the greatest extent possible and we need guidelines for that. This paper delivers such guidelines by exploring design of hybrid wind and solar energy and unusual large solar installation angles. The hybrid wind and solar energy supply and energy demand is studied with an analytical analysis of average monthly energy yields in The Netherlands, Spain and Britain, capacity factor statistics and a dynamic energy supply simulation. The analytical focus in this paper differs from that found in literature, where analyses entirely rely on simulations. Additionally, the seasonal energy yield profile of solar energy at large installation angles is studied with the web application PVGIS and an hourly simulation of the energy yield, based on the Perez model. In Europe, the energy yield of solar PV peaks during the summer months and the energy yield of wind turbines is highest during the winter months. As a consequence, three basic hybrid supply profiles, based on three different mix ratios of wind to solar PV, can be differentiated: a heating profile with high monthly energy yield during the winter months, a flat or baseload profile and a cooling profile with high monthly energy yield during the summer months. It is shown that the baseload profile in The Netherlands is achieved at a ratio of wind to solar energy yield and power of respectively Ew/Es = 1.7 and Pw/Ps = 0.6. The baseload ratio for Spain and Britain is comparable because of similar seasonal weather patterns, so that this baseload ratio is likely comparable for other European countries too. In addition to the seasonal benefits, the hybrid mix is also ideal for the short-term as wind and solar PV adds up to a total that has fewer energy supply flaws and peaks than with each energy source individually and it is shown that they are seldom (3%) both at rated power. This allows them to share one cable, allowing “cable pooling”, with curtailment to -for example-manage cable capacity. A dynamic simulation with the baseload mix supply and a flat demand reveals that a 100% and 75% yearly energy match cause a curtailment loss of respectively 6% and 1%. Curtailment losses of the baseload mix are thereby shown to be small. Tuning of the energy supply of solar panels separately is also possible. Compared to standard 40◦ slope in The Netherlands, facade panels have smaller yield during the summer months, but almost equal yield during the rest of the year, so that the total yield adds up to 72% of standard 40◦ slope panels. Additionally, an hourly energy yield simulation reveals that: façade (90◦) and 60◦ slope panels with an inverter rated at respectively 50% and 65% Wp, produce 95% of the maximum energy yield at that slope. The flatter seasonal yield profile of “large slope panels” together with decreased peak power fits Dutch demand and grid capacity more effectively.
Internet of Things (IoT) is tagging low power devices, miniaturized, with machine-readable identification tags, which are integrated with sensors to collect information and wireless technology to connect them with the Internet. These devices have a very low energy usage. Powering these devices with battery is very labor intensive, costly and tedious especially as number of nodes increases, which is in many applications, is the case. Hence the main objective of this proposal is to introduce new product called RF Colletor, in the market such that IoT devices function independent of battery. Using the suggested approach the wille be energized using Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting. RF Collector wirelessly capture the RF energy that is wasted in space, and re-use it again as the power source for IoT devices and hence making them autonomous of battery. The ability to harvest RF energy enables wireless charging of low-power devices in real time. This has resulting benefits to sustainability, cost reduction, product design, usability, and reliability.
The objective of Sustainable Solid Biofuel project is to contribute to a zero-waste and low-carbon emission production of charcoal by evaluating the feasibility and energy efficiency of three different conversion technologies. According to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2015 3 billion (more than a third of the global population) use solid biomass as wood, charcoal, or animal waste for cooking and heating1. Charcoal is one of the most widely used of the solid biofuels. In current charcoal production processes the gas stream from pyrolysis are mostly directly released to the environment which wastes energy and causes serious environmental pollution. However, the production of charcoal can be improved to be practiced on a sustainable basis by careful selection of wood or alternative biomass source as wood waste or agricultural residues and further focusing on harvesting strategy and production techniques. In the conversion process it is necessary to increase the energy efficiency while reducing emissions. Further sustainability can be increased by processing the smoke that is exhausted from the kiln, that correspond to roughly one third of the whole biomass. Within the volatile components in the smoke there are chemicals which can be used, for example, as industrial cleaners or wood preservatives and thus one of the environmental drawbacks of charcoal production can be eliminated and turned into another product input. Brazil is the world's largest charcoal producer2 consequently the state of the art of the recearch in this field can be found in Brazil. In this Sustainable Solid Biofuels project one of the leading universities of Brazil, the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV) is joining forces with Avans University of Applied Sciences and two Dutch SMEs Privium B.V. and Charcotec B.V. to carry out the evaluation of the improvements that can be achieved in the energy efficiency.
