R&D Projects

System design to introduce energy-saving equipment for reinforcement of resilience

Principal Investigator

Principal Investigator: UEMICHI Akane
UEMICHI Akane
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, WASEDA University

Objective

Expected final outputs of this research project:
1. To develop a support tool for introductory planning of distributed power generation equipment by optimization calculation.
2. To develop a detailed simulation tool of energy system equipment for the validation of optimized equipment configuration.
3. To propose a novel subsidy measure to introduce energy-saving equipment based on a support tool for energy BCP planning developed in this research project.

Expected impacts and effects on the society after this research project is completed:
* To be aware of the effectiveness of introducing microgeneration equipment to a highly public facility, such as a disaster base hospital.
* To be enabled quantitatively discussions on the reinforcement of resilience in the case of disaster through introducing microgeneration equipment.
* To clarify the present situation about a subsidy for introducing power generation facilities to medical institutes, and to create a basis of discussions on a design of subsidy planning.

Outline

In Japan, severe disasters due to earthquakes, typhoons and torrential rain are occurring frequently. In addition to depriving precious lives and daily lives, the damage extends to economic, social and cultural losses. Especially after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, strengthening the resilience of the national land and social function is an urgent task. Based on this background, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) more and more attracts attention. Among them, securing energy sources is the most important issue from the viewpoint of business continuity, even if the lifeline such as the supply of electricity and gas disrupts in the event of a disaster. According to the BCP formulation guidelines of disaster base hospitals delivered by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in March 2017, keeping private power generation equipment which has a generation capacity of 60% in the normal situation was required.

Meanwhile, it is being studied to utilize private power generation facilities not only in emergency but also in normal times. Particularly distributed power generation equipment such as cogeneration systems, photovoltaic power generation systems, and storage batteries are useful from the viewpoint of energy saving. However, no quantitative evaluation has been made on the effect of introducing these distributed power generation equipment, taking into consideration several factors such as economic efficiency, environmental friendliness and business continuity. Furthermore, in current subsidy projects, subsidies are issued if energy conservation rate exceeds a certain level based on primary energy converted to crude oil. Under this system, it is impossible to deal with equipment introduction that takes BCP into consideration.

Therefore, in this research project, we aim to establish an energy BCP formulation support tool which can achieve multiple purposes mainly "balance of economic efficiency and environmental friendliness" and "strengthening regional resilience". Here, since it has high public nature, disaster base hospital is the target. We will make use of these tools to propose detailed system design for subsidies to introduce energy equipment. Among these, the energy BCP formulation support tool consists of (1) a distributed energy equipment introduction plan formulation support tool by optimization calculation and (2) an energy system detailed simulator for verifying the validity of the optimum equipment configuration: optimization tool and detailed simulator, respectively. The purpose of this support tool is to quantitatively show the usefulness of distributed power generation equipment introduction in normal times and disasters. Furthermore, the results obtained from the optimization tool are used to calculate the subsidy for the introduction of distributed power generation equipment


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