Interreg North-West Europe RED WoLF
EU-funded project “RED WoLF” (Rethink Electricity Distribution Without Load Following) launched
The RED WoLF project (acronym for: Rethink Electricity Distribution Without Load Following) funded by the EU programme Interreg North-West Europe (NWE), brings together 14 Partner Institutions from UK (5), France (4), Ireland (3), Belgium (1) and Germany (1).
Universities, housing associations, local authorities as well as training and other non-profit organisations across North-West Europe aim to tackle housing emissions, responsible for approximately 300 million tonnes of CO2/year.
What will the pilots be doing?
The RED WoLF project will increase renewables’ usage and reduce carbon emissions for homes with photovoltaic solar panels. The system will be installed in over 100 homes across North West Europe. Six pilot sites in UK, Ireland and France will fit houses with hybrid storage systems merging batteries and storage heaters. The heaters will provide heat on demand and the batteries will store output from the solar panels as well as low-carbon energy (wind/solar) drawn from the national grid at times of low demand using new ‘smart’ technology through which the houses hybrid storage systems will be able to communicate with the grid. This will remove the mismatch between generation and usage. Cork City Council has committed to installing ten of these units into its social housing stock.
What is the innovation?
Although solar panels, batteries and thermal storage currently exist, they are not systematically combined in homes. Storage will become affordable by combining batteries with a cheap heat storage technology. This will in turn enable homes with solar panels to use their energy locally, as well as to store grid electricity when nobody wants it. Negotiations with utilities will be aimed at achieving a reduced tariff for this service.
A home control system automatically makes decisions on storage based on local energy usage, the price of electricity, weather forecasts and the grid’s current CO2 intensity.
What is the generation usage mismatch?
One the one hand, there are times when a proportion of available renewable energy is wasted – it is being generated but no one uses it. On the other hand, there are certain times of day where energy demand is highest – from approximately 6 AM to 9 AM (when people are getting up and having breakfast) and from 4 PM to 8 PM (when they are home and getting the dinner on). At these times, demand is too high to rely on renewables alone so inefficient, carbon-intensive ”load-following” power plants are turned on to meet the demand.
What will be achieved?
Across the six pilot sites in UK, Ireland and France, there will be 100 houses which will reduce carbon emissions from their energy use by 215 tonnes/year. By the end of the project in 2022, the smart hybrid storage systems will be market-ready and prepared to be installed into NWE homes. In Cork City ten social houses will have the system installed and it is calculated that up to 21.5tonnes of CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere in Cork each year.
Who are the project partners? How long will the project last? How is the project budget allocated?
Lead Partner: Leeds Beckett University, UK
Project Partners:
1. Leeds Beckett University, UK
2. Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council OMBC, UK
3. Institute of Technology, Sligo ITS, Ireland
4. Université de Lorraine UoL, France
5. Électricité de France, France
6. Wakefield and District Housing Limited. UK
7. VOLTA, Belgium
8. National Union of Students of the United Kingdom, UK
9. Arge Solar e.V. Germany
10. Neolia, Netherlands
11. Comhairle Cathrach Chorcaí Ireland
12. Carbery Housing Association, Ireland
13. First Choice Homes, United Kingdom
14. Campus de l’Espace, France
Officially approved in January 2019, the project will end in July 2022.
The total budget received from Interreg North-West Europe (2014-2020) is €3.64 million of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Of this amount Cork City Council will receive €152,022
The total project budget is €6.06 million.
For more information please visit:
The contact person in Cork City Council is Brian Cassidy
Email: brian_cassidy@corkcity.ie
You can follow the project on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/REDWoLF_project
LinkedIn: