Development and Evaluation of Sustainable Technologies for Flexible Operation of Conventional Power Plants

This EPSRC-funded conventional power consortium (EP/K02115X/1) brings together five leading Universities in the UK and a number of industrial partners to make conventional power plants more flexible. It is led by Dr Simon Hogg at the University of Durham, working in collaboration with the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds and Oxford. The research programme covers a wide range of activities from detailed analysis of power station parts to determine how they will respond to large changes in load all the way up to modelling of the UK electrical network on a national level which informs us as to the load changes which conventional power plants will need to supply. The research work is divided up into a number of "workpackages" for which each University is responsible together they contribute to four major themes in the proposal: Maintaining Plant Efficiency, Improving Plant Flexibility, Increasing Fuel Flexibility and Delivering Sustainability. Working closely with our colleagues at the University of Leeds, we will explore options for increasing the use of biomass fuels by improving combustion. We will also contribute to the development of a Virtual Power Plant Simulation Tool, which will act as a bridge between the different project partners as inputs from the models produced at individual universities are combined.

For more information: www.epsrc.ac.uk.