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Feasibility and Impact Analysis on Exeter City Council estates

17 Jul

Posted by: Q Energy

Category: News

Making Exeter an Energy Neutral Council

As part of the Exeter City Futures initiative, QBots technologies have been engaged with ECC to understand its Energy Action plan 2017-22 to make Exeter an energy neutral council. Exeter City Council (ECC) have been evaluating and planning various renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives starting with its corporate estate.

QBots have attended several meetings with Jo Pearce (Corporate Energy Manager) and Paul Wotton from ECC to identify the sites that could benefit from energy storage. Following this, it was decided that sites located in the corporate estate with existing solar panels and/or high energy bills are good candidates for the installation of energy storage.

Following our discussions, the feasibility of a QBOTS system was evaluated for 5 sites belonging to the council’s corporate estate. The below table summarises our analysis.

	Site	Solar capacity	Storage solution considered	Possible Net income
1	Civic centre	70 KW	The solar capacity is less than demand, with all of the solar energy consumed on site. Hence only Behind the Meter storage (BTM) solution can be considered. Enabling Savings on the electricity bill and revenues through ancillary services at other times. Currently the building is on a day night tariff, this needs to change to a pass through billing system so become financially feasible	Saving: £10-15kRevenue: £20-25k
2	Royal Albert’s Memorial Museum (RAMM)	25 KW	Same as above, however the installation of additional solar PV should also be considered. Deployment of more solar capacity nearby can also be considered.	Savings:£10-15kRevenue: £20-25k
3	Mary Archers car park	150 KW	Deploying storage on site could help in utilising the solar energy locally, but requires engagement for private wire agreements	Savings: £1 kRevenue: £15-20k
4	John Lewis car park	150 KW	Private wire for nearby business use or Use for electric car charging points. Storage can also provide ancillary services to the network.	Savings: £1 kRevenue: £15-20k
5	Livestock centre	1.5 MW	85% of the solar energy is currently exported to grid. Co-located battery storage solution to better utilise the solar energy for local consumption can provide savings on the bill. Addition revenue exists from selling the stored solar energy and also from ancillary services including Demand Side Response (DSR).	Savings: £2-5k Revenue: £60-70k

Currently the Livestock centre is the most feasible site however, the RAMM and the civic centre both have significant potential for the future. Through this analysis we realised that pass through billing, or a large generation asset are required to ensure the feasibility of a BTM system.

A more in-depth analysis on the Livestock centre was undergone. A proposal was then put forward suggesting a design for an energy storage system, which will enable ECC to maximise their benefits from solar generation and existing private wire agreements.

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