New Housing Development

Full Name
Intelligent Grid in a New Housing Development

Project Description
This project considers how distributed energy for new housing developments will impact residents, whether it changes their energy use and their energy awareness. Residential buildings represent 20% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and are largely responsible for the escalating peak electrical demand.

The project monitors real system performance of a new residential development where homes contain a range of efficiency features and allow interactive energy management by the resident.  Some issues being addressed include ownership and control of distributed resources (i.e. local generation and loads) in residential installations and how modelled behaviour translates to real behaviour and under different circumstances.

UniSA is working with the SA Land Management Corporation to develop the state of the art sustainable housing estate, Lochiel Park Green Village, which comprises 100 homes with a range of environmental sustainability features. The Village has a target of a 66% reduction in energy use and a 74% reduction in consequent greenhouse gas emissions in comparison with the average Adelaide household. The reductions are being achieved by:

optimising allotment design to maximise environmental benefits
reducing building energy requirements through passive design (7.5 star rating, minimum)
specified energy efficient appliances for heating and cooling
use of renewable energy (1kW photovoltaic system per 100m2 of living area)
installing electricity load-limiting devices
special bundled tariff incorporating green power
smart metering and real time display of energy usage
solar hot water systems (gas boosted)

Many other innovations will be installed in specific homes with some being designed as net zero energy homes.  This project will address the socio-economic impacts of demand management solutions in order to complement technical considerations.

Project team
University of South Australia

Project Outcomes
The project will provide valuable data and insights into how residential users will interact with and respond to distributed energy and intelligent energy control features and how behaviour might be modified to achieve energy and environmental objectives. Specific outcomes include:

Part 1: Two year monitored data on system performance, behaviour trends and energy use patterns which will validate energy, economic and social interaction models being developed by the CSIRO researchers and through other intelligent grid cluster projects.

Part 2: Hard evidence of the benefits of the greater use of intelligent features and distributed generation which will inform utilities, planning authorities, developers and policy makers.

Part 3: The ability to evaluate actual performance and benefits of a range of intelligent energy management technologies and to carry out cost-benefit analysis for each of them.

Part 4: Increased understanding of the benefits and practical challenges of incorporating intelligent energy features and distributed energy options in new housing estates.

Part 5: Greater government, industry and community awareness of the role of distributed energy in reducing peak demand, greenhouse gas emissions and the benefits of integrating distributed energy technologies in housing estates.

Part 6: An integrated technical, environmental, social and economic evaluation of the impact of intelligent and distributed energy features in the housing sector.