When we launched the Future Transport insights series, we outlined how our future transport will require a combination of technology advancement, shared mobility, automation and digitality supported transport systems.
A focus on an holistic system of energy systems, private and public transport and infrastructure is required to ensure integration across different strategic objectives and deliver a sustainable net gain.
In this insights piece, Keith Owen, Head of Systems Development and Energy Strategy, Northern Gas Networks, explains how InTEGReL is looking to achieve an integrated energy future.
As highlighted by the Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review, Energy is an outstanding and distinctive capability of the North of England, where the North is highly productive and can compete on national and international stages.
Northern Gas Networks is working in partnership with Newcastle University, Northern Powergrid, Northumbrian Water, 3 Mobile and Siemens to develop Integrated Transport Electricity Gas Research Laboratory (InTEGReL) as a test bed for future energy solutions and to establish InTEGReL as the UK’s first Net Zero energy hub.
InTEGReL sits directly within the NE Energy Catalyst energy strategy and forms part of the key strategic approach developed by the North East Local Enterprise Partnership. The facility aims to drive new low carbon solutions and accelerate the transition to Net Zero in the north supporting the region’s desire to be an early adopter of low carbon solutions which bring about investments in new jobs, skills and growth.
It is specifically focused on the Clean Growth Grand Challenge being driven through the government’s Industrial Strategy, to create a unique multi-utility research and demonstration ecosystem available to SMEs, industry, academia and the community, helping to promote and accelerate new low carbon energy and sustainability solutions and position the North as the UK’s leading location for energy for growth opportunities.
There is an urgent need to deliver real world solutions which accelerate the decarbonisation of heat, power and transport. The government has set a Net Zero carbon target for 2050 and in addition have brought forward the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles to 2035.
Simply put, there is no do-nothing option. Everything we currently consider normal, driving a petrol or diesel vehicle, using natural gas, oil or other fossil fuel based energy, to heat our homes and so on cannot continue given the urgent global climate challenge.
NGN and our partners believe that through close collaboration we can accelerate the decarbonisation of our energy and do so in a way that reduces the impact of that change on our everyday lives. We believe that looking closely at how the different energy uses of, gas, electricity, oil and so on, how they are delivered, how they are produced and stored and how they depend upon each other and wider services, will help us understand where the challenges are and opportunities to deliver improved solutions and new technologies.
We are doing this through the InTEGReL site, our Net Zero Energy Hub.
InTEGReL is a 15-acre site based in Low Thornley, Gateshead and is a unique UK multi-vector integrated energy systems research and demonstration facility investigating utility scale infrastructure.
The site currently hosts a 90-seater conferencing facility, the InTEGReL observatory and new digital space incorporating a NB-IoT lab and external comms tower dedicated to the site, a data centre, EV charging and standby generator.
This year NGN and partners will construct a 300KW of solar generation, a 300KW battery storage facility, increase the 11kv electrical connection to the site to circa 2MW, in readiness for future green hydrogen production as part of the HyDeploy project and construct homes on site to demonstrate for the first time in the UK new appliances capable to using only hydrogen for both heating and cooking.
NGN’s future vision and that of the region considers the decarbonisation of transport. While we have a growing electric vehicle charging infrastructure already, our ambition is to see a hydrogen refuelling station developed to demonstrate the simplicity and similarities hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have to those of a petrol or diesel today, i.e. long range and rapid refuelling [3mins], whilst at the same time being climate-friendly, with only water emitted at the exhaust pipe. Transport North East is working with NGN and partners to make this a reality on a key opportunity site.
This is part of a wider automotive innovation sector that has grown in the region from the whole systems approach to energy transitions led by the University’s National Centre for Energy Systems Integration through to the research by the university into improving battery technology and the manufacture of such vehicles in the region.
Throughout 2020, NGN and partners are working to create a new customer-focused research area which we call the Customer Energy Village. Within this space we plan to build several homes that reflect the properties we live in today.
In doing so, we’ll establish an environment which supports research and innovation into how we can improve the energy efficiency of older style properties, demonstrate different heat solutions, including hydrogen as a green gas, and deploy technologies that allow all aspects of society to fully participate in the transition to Net Zero.
The Customer Energy village will be InTEGReL partners primary focus through this year and next to discuss challenging areas such as how to deliver a fair energy transition and how decarbonisation will impact customers, with a particular focus on vulnerability.
The longer-term aim is to establish a permanent research and teaching capability on site through a Newcastle University development known as the Energy Systems Hub for Innovation and Engagement (ESHIE).
ESHIE is a 4000m2 development hosting state of the art research and teaching space with additional conferencing capability. There is also potential to co-locate an SME incubator space to accelerate the commercialisation and deployment of research outputs into small businesses including the transport sector.
This would support the wider business community to create a thriving low carbon energy ecosystem in the North of England.
Funding for the ESHIE development continues to be sought to establish the £25m centre and drive the green growth economy both locally and nationally.
Once funding has been secured it is anticipated the design and build will take under two years.
To find out more, visit the InTEGRel Q&A page on the Northern Gas Networks website.