Our Work

With the UK government pushing industries and businesses to decarbonize their energy sources as part of the Net Zero target, there has been an enormous upsurge in renewable installations across the United Kingdom. Although the government supports these regulations through various grants and subsidies, ultimately, the economics of these projects is the responsibility of the main stakeholders, which are the businesses themselves.

Problem Statement

Water utility companies are very energy-intensive and drive emissions. According to 2022 Energy Consumption in the UK, the water utility industry is the second largest sector of electricity consumption according to 5 GWh [1]. Moreover, energy has become recognised in the sector as a substantial operating cost that needs to be managed, driven by both the rising cost of electricity and the greenhouse gas footprint associated with energy use [2]. As a result, the company has to utilises new technology and innovation to reduce energy prices and emissions for customers.

Our project aims to aid the stakeholders of these projects in the decision-making process by firstly analysing the efficiency of supplementing user demand with self-generated green energy, then modelling and exploring the upside of a storage system on efficiency and economic viability, and lastly presenting a techno-commercial analysis of our findings.

References

[1] GOV.UK. (n.d.). Energy consumption in the UK 2022. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-consumption-in-the-uk-2022.

[2] Majid, A., Cardenes, I., Zorn, C., Russell, T., Colquhoun, K., Bañares-Alcantara, R., & Hall, J. (2020). An analysis of electricity consumption patterns in the water and wastewater sectors in South East England, UK. Water (Basel), 12(1), 225.