Durham Energy Institute (DEI) is a research institute located within Durham University, England. It was launched in September 2009 for research in the fields of energy technology and society. The current Executive Director is Professor Jon Gluyas.
The principal aim of the DEI is to find solutions for societal aspects of energy use and so
The DEI has expertise in a number of energy technology areas:
Biofuels covers a range of technologies, either where biological material is readily converted to an energy source, or living organisms produce a fuel source. [1] The DEI undertakes research on Microalgae biofuels, Cellulosic Crops and aspects related to intellectual property and the social pressures on biofuel policy. [2] [3]
The DEI undertakes photovoltaics research (PV) on the fundamental science that underpins both organic and inorganic PV devices right through to their design, manufacturing and deployment. [4] Key areas are: organic PV, inorganic PV, hybrid organic-inorganic structures and the underpinning systems required to successfully deploy PV. [5] [6] [7]
Includes wind, wave, hydro, microgeneration, smart grids, and grid integration of renewables. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
The Centre for Research into Earth Energy Systems (CeREES), formed in January 2006, performs research into topics such as the exploitation of fossil fuels and shale gas, carbon capture and storage, geothermal energy, and coal pollution mitigation. [15]
Energy and society research at the DEI is committed to developing pragmatic solutions to contemporary energy issues, including renewable energy, energy distribution, geopolitical security and climate change. [16] The Society and Energy Research Cluster at DEI is fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing on the expertise of a wide range of social and physical science disciplines across the University. The ambition of the cluster is to develop new theoretical approaches to current energy research challenges based on the conception of energy systems as socio-technical. [17] [18] [19] [20]
Includes resource management and pricing, technological change and innovation, carbon finance, economics of renewables, environmental impacts, consumer behaviour. [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]
Pragmatic low-carbon solutions to the UK energy challenges will inevitably include nuclear energy. Fusion energy provides an alternative nuclear route. It is a demanding technology that includes holding a plasma burning at 100 million degrees. [27] However the fuel is derived from seawater (i.e. essentially limitless), the levels of toxic materials are very much less than produced using fission because of the short lifetimes of the materials involved and fusion technology is not a weapons technology. Work at Durham includes the Superconductivity Group, [28] the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation Group, [29] and the European Reference Laboratory. [30] [31] [32]
Its board of advisors includes Ian Burdon, Benj Sykes DONG Energy, John Loughhead UKERC, Helen Moss IBM and Andrew Mill Narec.
The Durham CDT in Energy forms an important and integral part of the DEI, offering an interdisciplinary postgraduate research training programme in energy. [33]
The MSc Energy and Society is led by Durham University's Anthropology Department, in association with the Durham Energy Institute and its partner departments (including Engineering, Social Sciences and Humanities). Unique among Masters programmes, the course emphasizes the insights that the social sciences can offer to energy and development, and vice versa. [34]
Renewable energy is energy from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. Renewable resources include sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy sources are sustainable, some are not. For example, some biomass sources are considered unsustainable at current rates of exploitation. Renewable energy is often used for electricity generation, heating and cooling. Renewable energy projects are typically large-scale, but they are also suited to rural and remote areas and developing countries, where energy is often crucial in human development.
Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER).
Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially used for electricity generation and as photosensors.
In energy economics and ecological energetics, energy return on investment (EROI), also sometimes called energy returned on energy invested (ERoEI), is the ratio of the amount of usable energy delivered from a particular energy resource to the amount of exergy used to obtain that energy resource.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Department of Energy and operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, a joint venture between MRIGlobal and Battelle. Located in Golden, Colorado, NREL is home to the National Center for Photovoltaics, the National Bioenergy Center, and the National Wind Technology Center.
In the 19th century, it was observed that the sunlight striking certain materials generates detectable electric current – the photoelectric effect. This discovery laid the foundation for solar cells. Solar cells have gone on to be used in many applications. They have historically been used in situations where electrical power from the grid was unavailable.
The photovoltaic effect is the generation of voltage and electric current in a material upon exposure to light. It is a physical and chemical phenomenon.
A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by means of the photovoltaic effect. It is a form of photoelectric cell, a device whose electrical characteristics vary when exposed to light. Individual solar cell devices are often the electrical building blocks of photovoltaic modules, known colloquially as "solar panels". The common single-junction silicon solar cell can produce a maximum open-circuit voltage of approximately 0.5 to 0.6 volts.
A microgrid is a local electrical grid with defined electrical boundaries, acting as a single and controllable entity. It is able to operate in grid-connected and in island mode. A 'Stand-alone microgrid' or 'isolated microgrid' only operates off-the-grid and cannot be connected to a wider electric power system.
I.M. Dharmadasa is Professor of Applied Physics and leads the Electronic Materials and Solar Energy Group at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Dharme has worked in semiconductor research since becoming a PhD student at Durham University as a Commonwealth Scholar in 1977, under the supervision of the late Sir Gareth Roberts. His interest in the electrodeposition of thin film solar cells grew when he joined the Apollo Project at BP Solar in 1988. He continued this area of research on joining Sheffield Hallam University in 1990.
Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are photovoltaic materials that are used to replace conventional building materials in parts of the building envelope such as the roof, skylights, or façades. They are increasingly being incorporated into the construction of new buildings as a principal or ancillary source of electrical power, although existing buildings may be retrofitted with similar technology. The advantage of integrated photovoltaics over more common non-integrated systems is that the initial cost can be offset by reducing the amount spent on building materials and labor that would normally be used to construct the part of the building that the BIPV modules replace. In addition, BIPV allows for more widespread solar adoption when the building's aesthetics matter and traditional rack-mounted solar panels would disrupt the intended look of the building.
Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal power and heat. Second-generation technologies are market-ready and are being deployed at the present time; they include solar heating, photovoltaics, wind power, solar thermal power stations, and modern forms of bioenergy. Third-generation technologies require continued R&D efforts in order to make large contributions on a global scale and include advanced biomass gasification, hot-dry-rock geothermal power, and ocean energy. In 2019, nearly 75% of new installed electricity generation capacity used renewable energy and the International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted that by 2025, renewable capacity will meet 35% of global power generation.
Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic effect. Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and solar tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight to a hot spot, often to drive a steam turbine.
A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity, a solar inverter to convert the output from direct to alternating current, as well as mounting, cabling, and other electrical accessories to set up a working system. It may also use a solar tracking system to improve the system's overall performance and include an integrated battery.
Thin-film solar cells are made by depositing one or more thin layers of photovoltaic material onto a substrate, such as glass, plastic or metal. Thin-film solar cells are typically a few nanometers (nm) to a few microns (µm) thick–much thinner than the wafers used in conventional crystalline silicon (c-Si) based solar cells, which can be up to 200 µm thick. Thin-film solar cells are commercially used in several technologies, including cadmium telluride (CdTe), copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), and amorphous thin-film silicon.
Between 1992 and 2022, the worldwide usage of photovoltaics (PV) increased exponentially. During this period, it evolved from a niche market of small-scale applications to a mainstream electricity source. From 2016-2022 it has seen an annual capacity and production growth rate of around 26%- doubling approximately every three years.
Narec, since 2014 known as the National Renewable Energy Centre, is a part of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, a British technology innovation and research centre for offshore wind power, wave energy, tidal energy and low carbon technologies. ORE Catapult's head office is in Glasgow, Scotland. The centre operates multi-purpose offshore renewable energy test and demonstration facilities. It is similar to other centres, such as NREL in the US and National Centre for Renewable Energies (CENER) in Spain. The National Renewable Energy Centre is based in Blyth, Northumberland.
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building-mounted and other decentralized solar power because they supply power at the utility level, rather than to a local user or users. Utility-scale solar is sometimes used to describe this type of project.
Frede Blaabjerg is a Danish professor at Aalborg University. At Aalborg, he works in the section of Power Electronic Systems of the department of Energy Technology. Blaabjerg's research concerns the applications of power electronics, including adjustable-speed drives, microgrids, photovoltaic systems, and wind turbines. By the number of citations, he is the most cited author of several IEEE journals: IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics.
Joseph Appelbaum is a professor (emeritus) in the Engineering Faculty at Tel Aviv University, and former holder of the Ludwig Jokel Chair of Electronics in the faculty. He is a life fellow of IEEE “for contributions to solar conversion systems”.