Demand management at Lancaster University. Jan Bastiaans

Jan is the relatively newly appointed energy manager at Lancaster University and in his talk he took us through what that job entailed, the carbon and sustainability related targets he is expected to meet and the opportunities and limitations that there are around his role.  He stressed the scale and complexity of the campus – over 100 buildings of different ages and construction and a mix of work, domestic and commercial activities within these – and also the overarching University objectives which framed the work he did. The University is seeking to grow, to improve the quality of the student experience and to develop services such as 24hr opening of the library, all of which had implications for energy demand, but were not thought about in those terms.  He recognised there was much potential in forms of demand management – including matching demand with onsite wind and solar generation; responding to grid ‘Triad’ notifications; developing more information about and control of energy use across campus – but little capacity at the moment to take these up.  Various ideas were discussed that DEMAND could be interested in, including undertaking a ‘flexibility audit’ to identify where demand-response possibilities might be found, a synchronisation analysis of the rhythms of institution and looking at how timetabling could be oriented around demand management opportunities.