Impact of various technologies on peak energy demand of residential building in the cold climate of UK

Residential buildings are the key contributors to the high electrical energy demand in the United Kingdom. Heat pumps mainly consume electricity to meet space heating and hot water demands. The Time-of-use tariffs have been introduced to enable consumers to time dependency of demand. However, peak energy demand, which occurs in a small percentage during a specific time of day, significantly impacts the overall power balance and stability of the utility grid. Investigation into integrating various demand-side management technologies to reduce peak heating demand has been increasing. In the present study, the impact of various technologies, such as photovoltaic panels with battery energy storage system (PV-BESS) (case 1), PV-BESS with the solar thermal system (case 2), and photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) with BESS (case 3) system on peak energy demand and overall energy demand have been analyzed in cold climatic conditions. In the context of a residential building, a simulation model of David Wilson home was developed integrating various technologies, which was compared against the baseline model (case 0) integrated with an air source heat pump. The simulation was performed on DesignBuilder/EnergyPlus for the UK’s winter month i.e., January. The Simulation results show that without any integration of technologies, the heating demand of David Wilson home in the month of January was 1531.6 kWh in case 0, which was reduced to 1456.1 kWh in case 1, 1318 kWh in case 2 and 1132.47 kWh in case 3. With the integration of the solar heating system, a maximum reduction in peak energy demand is observed with the PV/T-BESS (case 3) system.