Advising Oxfordshire County Council on the masterplan for a new development.
West Oxfordshire District Council’s draft Area Action Plan for the development sets at its core a requirement for the development to be net zero carbon – with low energy use in new buildings and a low carbon energy supply with no use of fossil fuels for heating and hot water and opportunities for on-site renewable electricity maximised.
For this new development of 2200 homes, a science park, a school, a health centre and a park & ride, Urbanomy simulated the future energy demand of the buildings and vehicles, assessed the solar potential, quantified the flexibility from residential thermal storage, batteries and electric vehicles through V1G/V2G. The potential revenues through grid services supporting the transport and distribution grid has been assessed to support the business model of this innovative development.
We adopted a scenario-based approach to define the best energy and mobility scheme to achieve net zero carbon by comparing a decentralised system using heat pumps, a centralised system using district heating and a hybrid system with an ambient loop.
Outcome:
- we provided recommendations to ensure that the project is net zero carbon,
- we modelled the use of V2G to cover up to more than 100% of charging costs,
- we designed a strategy to achieve 15 kwh/m2/year of building heating requirements in line with future UK standards.
Urbanomy collaborated with EDF R&D to deliver a cutting edge evaluation of the whole value chain of smart energy for this working example. The methodology has been developed in a replicable way to benefit for other similar development.
An online tool was created to enable project decision makers to monitor, manage and communicate their action plan.