Description of the activities of the SPS/Infrastructure working group.

In the future energy system there will be an increasing use of distributed generation (both electricity as well as heat). To develop such a system there is a need for a complete vision about energy. In the present energy system most of the building are provided by two energy flows. Mostly there is one connection to the electricity grid and one to the natural gas grid (sometimes there is a city heating connection instead of the gas connection). These two flows are working largely independently to each other. However the growing use of distributed generation will result in an influence of the two energy flows to each other. For instance; a micro CHP unit will generate both electricity and heat at the same time, but the demand will not always be the same.

All this has to be facilitated by the electricity and the natural gas grids and they will become more and more interwoven. Thereby the electricity grids have to deal with a ‘two-way traffic’, whereas the present grids are developed to deal with (one-way) flows from the central power stations to the consumers.

The Infrastructure Working Group focuses on the research of the (im)possibilities of a such future energy system, where the consumers must be provided with the same comfort level as they are used to. This energy system has to be more efficient with (primary) energy then the energy system of 2006. Of course the precondition has to be applied that the system is economically attractive. The research will not only be executed at the desk, but in the action plan also some experiments in practice are taken into account.

All the problems of inefficiencies are input for the ICT working group to develop an intelligent control of the system.


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