The REACT and RESPOND projects were highlighted in the webinar NUIG Student Branch of ASHRAE: “Demand response programs for building energy efficiency and user’s comfort”, that took place on 8th October 2020. The webinar, which was the first official event of the branch, was chaired by its president Raquel Lima and featured three speakers: Marcus M. Keane, María Luisa Serrano, and Toke Haunstrup Christensen. The event invitation circulated by the organisers is showed below. Overall, 49 people registered for it.
Dr. Keane, which is the director of the IRUSE group and lecturer at the Department of Civil Engineering, NUI Galway, presented “Integrating Demand Response in Energy Management Systems”. In his presentation, Dr. Keane provided an overview of European #H2020 Demand Response Research Projects 2017-2020 with a specific focus on the H2020 REACT and RESPOND projects.
Ms. Serrano, which is an innovation and regulation engineer at the Spanish utility Feníe Energía, presented “RESPOND and REACT Projects in Residential and Community Buildings”. In her presentation, Ms. Serrano highlighted that the electricity system needs are significatively evolving and constantly influencing the European utility industry. Distributed generation and renewable energies are gaining importance in most markets, leading to a necessary grid adaption. Several projects that receive funding from the EU are focused on DR solutions in the domestic environment, as Project REACT, and Project RESPOND.
Dr. Christensen, which is a senior researcher at the Department of the Built Environment at Aalborg University in Denmark, presented “Living with PV panels: Households time-shifting daily practices to optimize the consumption of own PV power”. In his presentation, Dr. Christensen highlighted that in many countries, a rising number of homes get PV panels installed and become “prosumers”. So, the focus of his presentation was on how this affects the everyday practices of households with regard to time-shifting their electricity consumption in order to optimize self-sufficiency. Results from the RESPOND trial with homeowners and tenants were presented and analysed.
After the three presentations, a Q&A session was held and the speakers answered five questions from the audience.
A follow-up survey was also applied after the webinar and received 14 answers. The survey’s answers are showed in the graphs below.
Further positive feedback and constructive suggestions were also received by the audience through the survey.
The webinar recording was posted on the ASHRAE Ireland Chapter YouTube channel and can be accessed here:
CLICK TO WATCH WEBINAR.
According to the secretary of the ASHRAE Ireland Chapter, Daniel Coakley, the recording is already receiving a lot of views and, in fact, is the channel’s best performance for the first 24 hours.
Finally, the NUIG Student Branch of ASHRAE would like to thank the webinar’s speakers, organisers, attendees and project partners for the event’s success.
