CEDS - City Energy Demand Simulation

Our proposal addresses Challenge 1. CEDS - The City Energy Demand Simulation - provides cities and local authorities with the means to visualise future energy demand (including gas and electricity) for any geographic area ranging from a street, to a district, to the city itself, including both residential and industrial/commercial energy demand.

CEDS allows planners and decision makers to easily visualise the impacts of alternative demand and supply side energy investment strategies on overall energy costs, emissions, and fuel poverty levels . This will be important for cities and planners because the innovative features of CEDS will enable planners to understand the impacts of new energy technology deployments on the energy demand of buildings.

- CEDS can demonstrate the relative economic and environmental attractiveness of local energy supply schemes
such as district heating combined with power versus importing electricity from the grid;
- CEDS can illuminate the impacts of technology deployment by social geography within the city boundaries

Therefore, CEDS will allow cities and local authorities to clearly identify how to deploy limited capital budgets to greatest effect when developing low carbon, cost effective local energy infrastructure. By modelling future demand, supply and cost scenarios, cities will be able to prioritise the development of local energy assets, such as district heating networks, energy from waste, retrofit and new build locations. CEDS will enable cities to understand how they can deliver on their priorities for ensuring there are cost effective locations for business and industry, with a secure supply, whilst also helping tackle fuel poverty and reducing carbon emissions and energy costs.

CEDS has been made possible by building on the innovative work done by the Energy Saving Trust, supported by the UCL Energy Institute, for National Grid and Western Power Distribution (WPD). These projects were focused on the future shape and scale of demand at National and electricity sub-station (typically a few hundred homes) level respectively. In both projects the work centred on premise modelling combining EST’s information on the fabric of buildings, demographics of occupants with EST datasets on the performance of alternative technologies in buildings, as well as UCL's expertise in industrial/commercial energy demand.

CEDS is truly ground-breaking in that it enables holistic design of the future energy architecture of a city taking into account the economic, environmental and social outcomes of alternative options. CEDS will be a truly sustainable decision making tool.