Redwolf Tender

WDH is taking part in a €6m EU-funded research project titled "RED WoLF" (Rethink Electricity Distribution Without Load Following). This Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) research project brings together 14 partners from UK (5), France (4), Ireland (3), Belgium (1) and Germany (1). These partners include universities, housing associations, local authorities as well as training and other non-profit organisations across North-West Europe aiming to tackle carbon emissions from homes.

The RED WoLF project will increase renewable electricity usage and reduce carbon emissions in homes by installing solar photovoltaics (PV) and hybrid storage systems (HSS) merging battery storage and storage heaters. The storage heaters will provide heat on demand and the batteries will store output from the solar PV as well as low-carbon electricity (e.g. wind or solar) drawn from the national grid at times of low demand using new 'smart' technology through which a dwelling's HSS will be able to communicate with the grid. This will remove the mismatch between electricity generation and consumption which currently requires high-carbon electricity generation during times of peak demand. The HSS will also be able to draw electricity from the grid at times of peak renewable electricity generation and provide additional capability to increase the amount of variable non-synchronous renewable generation in the grid at a given time.

Although solar PV, batteries and storage heaters currently exist, they are not systematically combined in homes and do not provide a transmission system ancillary service in order to stabilise the future power system. This research project aims to analyse their potential to do so.

Project partners of the RED WoLF project will be researching and developing algorithms which will instruct and set rules, via a 'smart' controller over the internet, that the HSS must operate under. For example, only charging the battery from grid electricity during the night tariff; or the RED WoLF algorithm will identify low CO2 grid electricity periods (real time and forecasted). The controller must therefore have the ability to instruct the dwelling's battery to charge at these times. Other factors influencing the algorithm design will include but are not limited to local energy usage, the price of electricity, weather forecasts and the grid's current CO2 intensity. Monitoring equipment will also be installed in the dwellings The RED WoLF project will install solar PV, batteries and storage heaters in 100 homes across six pilot sites in the UK, Ireland and France.

WDH, as one of the project partners, will be providing one of the pilot sites. This will include 20 dwellings in the Wakefield District, West Yorkshire, UK. It is important to note that the 20 dwellings are low rise flats, which may have different implications to individual dwellings such as houses and bungalows.