A UCL-led team of researchers has won a grant worth more than £850,000 to develop a new model of energy consumption.
The grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council covers the cost of a three-year project led by Tadj Oreszczyn, Director of the UCL Energy Institute.
The project will involve a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, building scientists and energy system modellers from the UCL Energy Institute, UCL Mathematics, and elsewhere.
Professor Oreszczyn and his colleagues hope to develop a model of energy consumption that links building and occupant diversity with occupant behaviour.
Recent studies have revealed profound differences in energy use between different groups of occupants – a variability that existing models fail to capture. This project promises for the first time to link behaviour, the housing stock and the energy supply in dynamic, hourly demand-supply system models.