Thermochemical seasonal solar energy storage for building applications (SeasonalStorage)

The UK government's advisory Committee on Climate Change recommended "net zero" greenhouse gases by 2050. Even if other countries followed the UK, there was a 50-50 chance of staying below the recommended 1.5°C temperature rise by 2100. A 1.5°C rise is considered the threshold for dangerous climate change. The domestic sector currently accounts for about 30% of UK's energy consumption and 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, a result of dependency on fossil fuels particularly for space heating and hot water. Natural gas provides 85% of heating load in centrally heated houses and 50% in non-centrally heated houses. The households emit around 2t CO2 per household per year, which represents around 1/10 of average UK household's carbon footprint. A solution is making existing and new properties more energy efficient and finding low-carbon alternative heat sources for 85% of UK households that currently use fossil fuel based fuel. The solar-powered SeasonalStorage system addresses the year around "heat on demand" issue in local building sector. Renewable energy will be effectively store heat in the integrated SeasonalStorage and utilised for periods of higher demand and/or limited energy availability. This project will contribute to a short/seasonal, low cost, efficient and decarbonised solution for multi-functional heat storage in local energy systems. A consortium consists of industry and a university with complementary skills and will work together to provide affordable, reliable and efficient renewable energy storage technology for local energy systems in UK and overseas. The overall aim of this project is to design, develop and construct an innovative and inter-seasonal thermochemical energy storage system, which can be run stand-alone or as a key component integrated into the existing local energy systems. The proposed technology combines solar PV/thermal and novel hollow fibre heat exchangers, forming a promising energy storage solution for decarbonised local energy systems with high energy density, low heat loss, low regeneration temperature, low volume requirement, simple design, easy fabrication and operation. It enables better local energy resilience through a smart solar heat storage component using environmental-friendly thermochemical materials and facilitates higher renewable energy penetration by mitigating the gap between energy generation and demand for community buildings. This will be beneficial for solar PV/thermal, thermochemical storage material manufacturers, energy industry, heat exchanger manufacturers and society. The commercialisation of proposed system will create new job opportunities in energy storage, renewable energy, building services, local energy services sectors and the national/international trading businesses.