■ Chapter 6: Future Energy Labs

6.

Future Energy Labs

3ME ABE AE AS CEG EEMCS IDE TPM

24/7 energy lab: A local, CO2-neutral energy system for the built environment

prof. dr. Miro Zeman, prof. dr. ir. Zofia Lukszo, dr. Phil Vardon, dr. ir. Martin ten Pierik

TRL

Summary

The 24/7 energy lab is located at The Green Village at TU Delft campus. At this site all components that are needed to solely use renewable energy for everything that you would do at home is integrated into one experimental energy system. This house has no cables or pipes that connects it to the external grid. It will demonstrate that with the developed technologies it can function totally autonomous. With PV panels renewable solar energy is converted into electricity which can be used either directly or can be stored in batteries and/or as hydrogen. Subsequently the hydrogen can be used in a fuel cell to generate electricity when there is not enough sun or wind available. This basic set up of the autonomous energy system can be extended with other technologies and devices over time.

What’s next?

With the realization of the 24/7 energy lab the next step is to learn from what happens when different types of technologies and devices are integrated or connected to the site. Users, construction companies, legislators, municipalities, grid companies and researchers will work together to learn and create new knowledge about how this sustainable energy system can be realized and will function. This learning process will raise new research questions about how to design and expand the system and how it works in a real-life working setting. This will also include legal, socio-economic and governance aspects.

Contribution to the Energy Transition

The realization of this site contributes to the energy transition by demonstrating the integration of the various renewable energy conversion and storage components on residential level. By making households and/or residential areas energy autonomous, fully relying on renewable energy sources, the pressure to expand or replace the underground local grid with thicker cables will be reduced.

TRL

EEMCS

Electrical Sustainable Power Lab

prof. dr. ir. Peter Palensky, prof. dr. Miro Zeman, prof. dr. ir. Pavol Bauer, dr. ir. Olindo Isabella

Summary

Developing a robust grid that is fed with fluctuating renewable resources is a major challenge. Additionally, making everything that can be attached to the grid smart enhances the complexity of the integration. It is hard to say what will happen when we electrify our entire society. The ESP lab is a unique facility at the TU Delft campus where all sorts of electrical energy technologies can be researched, developed and demonstrated. There is even a super computer and a control room that can be used for running grid simulations. At the lab different applications or real devices can be added to the (simulated) grid in order to investigate their impact or to train human operators on future scenarios. These simulations help to make the grid more resilient, efficient, flexible, safe, and reliable.

What’s next?

With so many different electrical engineering disciplines gathered in one location the next step is to work on integrating these new technologies, principles, methods, and components to the electricity grid – to make it future proof.

Contribution to the Energy Transition

The Energy transition is full of uncertainty – nobody can foresee which technology or development will make the biggest impact. Planning, designing, and operating complex systems requires robust decision making. The ESP lab is a unique facility – a single location where different types and even combinations of innovations can be researched, experimented and tested. Innovations that need to hit the market quickly to accelerate the change of our grid and the way how we produce, distribute and use electrical energy.

AE 3ME CEG AS

Floating Renewables Lab

TRL dr. ir. Axelle Viré, prof. dr. ir. Jan-Willem van Wingerden, prof. dr. ir. Andrei Metrikine, dr. -ing. Sebastian Schreier, dr. Amin Askarinejad, dr. Carey Walters, Friso Lippmann

Summary

The potential for capturing renewable energy at sea is huge. Floating energy devices – wind turbines, solar panels, wave energy convertors – are key enablers to harness renewable energy in deep sea. However, they combine many different research disciplines that need to be addressed in a coupled way to efficiently design and engineer the next-generation of floating offshore renewable energy systems. The Floating Renewables Lab brings together unique facilities and researchers in different fields to achieve this goal. A number of facilities will be connected virtually using a so-called ‘hardware-in-the-loop’ set-up. This bridges physical experiments with numerical modelling. Complex aerodynamics, floater stability, sea-keeping system, and even storage and transportation of energy are interesting challenges that can be addressed at the Floating Renewables Lab. Through the combination of these facilities and expertise, the engaged Principle Investigators aim to accelerate floating renewable innovations, research and education.

What’s next?

The first step is to virtually connect and upgrade all the facilities that play a role in developing floating renewable energy at TU Delft. The next steps are to build new facilities – including an extension to full scale measurements at sea.

Contribution to the Energy Transition

Offshore renewable energy harnessed by wind turbines, solar panels, and wave capturing devices offer great potential. However, eighty percent of our oceans are too deep to economically mount these devices on the seabed. A solution is to place them on floating support structures. The beauty of making all these devices float is that they can also be located much further out the coast. Additionally, they can also be used to convert renewable energy into an alternative energy carrier – such as H2. Floating offshore renewables will thus be a key enabler to make Europe climate neutral by 2050. 59

TRL

CEG

Campus Geothermal Well

dr. Phil Vardon, prof. dr. David Bruhn

dr. Susanne Laumann, dr. Lora Armstrong, prof. dr. ir. Kees Wapenaar, dr. ir. Guy Drijkoningen, dr. Auke Barnhoorn, dr. Hemmo Abels, prof. dr. ir. Evert Slob, dr. Denis Voskov, prof. dr. ir. Jan Dirk Jansen, dr. Maren Brehme, dr. Tobias Schmiedel, dr. Kees Weemstra, dr. ir. Deyan Draganov, dr. ir. Martin Bloemendal Summary TU Delft Campus Real Estate, Hydreco Geomec, EBN and Shell Geothermal. Geothermal energy is a fairly well developed technology but there are still many unknowns. The construction of a deep geothermal well serves to do further research into geothermal energy and to supply part of the buildings with low carbon heat. This deep geothermal project will have two wells of 2 to 2.5 km deep. The walls of the wells will be lined with different materials transforming them essentially into a plumbing system to transport warm water upwards and cool water downwards. Each of the wells will be fitted with a lot of sensors over the complete length of the wells and in monitoring stations at the surface. Through the sensors the researchers can gather data on how the wells interact with the environment. This project is unique as it will be constructed in an urban environment. This will generate valuable knowledge about how future geothermal projects can be done in other urban locations.

What’s next?

The current plan is to start installing the wells in 2022. There are a lot of remaining research questions that the researchers want to address with this project on site and several PhD projects are underway. A subsequent step is to look into high temperature heat storage so that heat that is brought to the surface when it is not needed, i.e. during the summer, can be stored to be used at an another moment in time (e.g., in winter).

Contribution to the Energy Transition

Part of the Dutch mission for the energy transition is to create more geothermal wells. To better understand such systems will allow more efficient and more reliable use of the geothermal resource, without unwanted impacts. Geothermal energy has the potential to contribute several tens of percent of the heat demand, and will need to be constructed and operated in urban environments to effectively deliver heat to where it is demanded.

AS EEMCS 3ME TPM AE

e-Refinery Centre

prof. dr. Bernard Dam, ir. John Nijenhuis, dr. A. Gangoli Rao, TRL prof. dr. H. Geerlings, dr. W.G. Haije, prof. dr. W de Jong, dr. L. Jourdin, dr. R. Kortlever, prof. dr. A. Ramirez Ramirez, dr. D.A. Vermaas, prof. dr. M. Zeman, dr. M. Alimoradi Jazi

Summary

The e-Refinery Institute combines researchers from across the university to work on developing processes and devices to produce fuels and base chemicals from water, air and electricity without the use of fossil resources. For these processes and devices to replace the current operations, they have to be demonstrated at a relevant scale. The e-Refinery Centre is going to be a place where researchers investigate the scaling of various new processes under relevant scale and conditions - for instance for the renewable production of ethylene; one of the main components for the production of plastics.

What’s next?

Through the realization of a e-Refinery Centre the researchers can learn to, experiment and gather new knowledge about how e-refinery installations, set-ups and processes are to be scaled. This centre will facilitate many innovative ideas to bridge the so called valley of death and reaching the demonstration phase instead of doing only simulations that show that it can work on a bigger scale.

Contribution to the Energy Transition

The e-Refinery Centre will contribute to the transition as it is expected to accelerate innovation of current industrial processes. Process that currently require fossil resources will be replaced by e-refinery processed and tools making our industry more sustainable.

TRL

3ME

Power & Heat Generation Lab

prof. dr. ir. Bendiks Jan Boersma

Summary

At the Heat & Power lab the research is focused on enhancing efficiency of processes of how energy in the form of chemical bonds can be converted into electricity or power capturing and putting as much of the released heat to good use. This power can be generated in all sorts of ways; for instance through using fuel cells for conversion hydrogen or ammonia. All these reactions have in common that part of the energy is turned into heat instead of 100% electricity. At the lab they design components that can capture this heat and use that energy too instead of letting it go to waste. Another venture for the lab is that they look into how fuel cells can burn cleanly. Combustion processes use air instead of pure oxygen you also emit nitrogen oxides and that needs to be removed afterwards. They experiment by building components or systems that can perform or enhance the reaction under scrutiny.

What’s next?

The next step is for industry to include, embed and integrate the developed system components to increase the efficiency of their processes. Another next step is to develop components that are allow direct air capture – building components that can directly capture CO2 and convert it into power.

Contribution to the Energy Transition

The components that are being developed at the Heat & Power lab not only enhance the effectiveness of the process for which they are being developed. They also increase the efficiency of the process with the given context in mind.

TPM

TPM Energy Transition Lab

dr. Gerdien de Vries & dr. Emile Chappin TRL

Summary

The TPM Energy transition lab is more an institute which aims to capture and connect all the different types of social science expertise that is being furthered and developed within the TPM faculty focused on the energy transition. At this lab the researchers are trying to quantify and model different kinds of human aspects related to the energy transition. They are building models predicting how people are going to behave in order to create insight in what this means for society. Together they are developing new approaches, methods and tools for fostering an effective fair and legitimate energy transition. Their biggest challenge is to model human behaviour in such a way that it does not violate the richness of this behaviour and to be able to create insight into what is fair for the energy transition.

What’s next?

Besides creating more insights for the energy transition a next step for the Lab is to contribute to building a (systems)theory that will capture more of the psychological side of how a system works or can be changed. With the creation of the valuable insights for the transition the researchers also hope to stay at the forefront of their research field attracting more excellent researchers and stimulating or facilitating interdisciplinary research and education.

Contribution to the Energy Transition

Our energy system cannot be transformed by simply changing and replacing current ways of doing things for new technologies. Reality is much more complex as also policies, laws and regulations, people’s behaviour and opinions – depending on which stakeholder they represent - play a role. The TPM energy transition lab brings together various types of social science expertise to create insights into the complexity of the transitions and decisions that need to be made.