Research themes

The research projects will be within the areas of development and application of sustainable construction, renewable energy applications and energy management technologies, including their economic and social impacts.

Attention will also extend to the way in which the adoption and use of such technologies can be enhanced through procurement and other policy levers. In particular, research in the Centre will be focused on two complementary themes:

Sustainable Building and Services Systems (Building Scale)

• The application and development of advanced computer simulation tools for the evaluation of conceptual design, detailed design, and optimisation of the performance of buildings and the systems
  
• Passive solar systems, such as solar walls and roofs, natural and hybrid ventilation systems
• Sustainable heating systems, such as ground source heat pumps, combined heat and power, biomass fuel systems, etc
• Heat recovery systems for recovering energy from exhaust ventilation air
• Building integrated renewable energy systems, such as micro wind turbines, photovoltaic power generation, solar thermal systems, etc
• Energy storage systems for storing excess energy generation in buildings and delivering it on demand
• Advanced operation and maintenance of building services systems for optimising performance and energy efficiency during their operation and ensuring compliance with EPBD
• Developing new concepts and maintenance procedures for extending system durability and sustainability to reduce frequency of breakdown and replacement

Energy Management in Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (Site Scale)

• Life-cycle assessment of potential renewable resources, eg: urban wind, solar, hydro, biomass, large-scale combined heat and power, ground heat, etc
• The evaluation, application and maintenance of low to zero carbon (LZC) generation technologies at the site scale, eg micro-wind, micro-hydro, ground source heat pumps, air-source heat pumps, solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, biomass, heat and power storage
• Systems integration of LZC generation technologies, eg:
• LZC generation integration at site or urban level
• sensor systems for resource and generation control
• monitoring and verification of emissions
• in-situ systems resilience and reliability assessment
• facilities management of whole energy system performance.
• Energy distribution and management of systems including:
• peer to peer smart meter networks
• sustainable heat distribution networks
• site scale storage technologies for heat and power.

The RE will have at least one company-based supervisor and two university supervisors. An EngD thesis will be submitted and examined at the end of the fourth year of the programme.