A renewable energy solution for Highfield Campus of University of Southampton

Abstract

In today's world where the global warming is one of the biggest problems for mankind, sustainable energy generation is becoming more and more important every day. This project focuses on the Highfield Campus of the University of Southampton and aims to achieve a more sustainable way of heat and electrical energy generation in order to help protect the environment. The electrical energy to the Highfield Campus is provided from the national grid which primarily burns fossil fuels whereas the heat energy is mainly obtained by burning natural gas. None of these methods are sustainable and are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. As the project objective, more sustainable ways of energy production in the campus are investigated, analysed and discussed in this report. For this purpose, data acquisition is done by obtaining the energy consumption figures of the buildings within the campus. On the other hand, feasibility studies for various types of renewable energy sources are conducted revealing their potential contributions and applicability. All the data are then worked through to design more sustainable energy systems sticking to the project aims. The resultant electrical and heat energy generation designs satisfy the project objective by utilizing alternative energy sources and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of the campus, even though not in huge amounts. The results obtained are satisfactory in the sense that the proposed designs are both technically and economically feasible. To conclude, these designs proposed in this project can be the first steps toward a more sustainable campus and get even more tempting with relevant technological improvements in the future.