THE PERFORMANCE OF AN LV NETWORK SUPPLYING A CLUSTER OF 500 HOUSES EACH WITH AN INSTALLED 1kWe DOMESTIC COMBINED HEAT AND POWER UNIT

Lovell Partnerships is currently building a new development of approximately 500 houses in East Manchester. Each house will have a WhisperGen™ dCHP (Domestic Combined Heat and Power ) unit supplied by Powergen. This will be the first cluster of dCHP units in the UK, and represents an ideal opportunity to monitor the effects of such a cluster in the local network. Each WhisperGen has an induction generator of roughly 1kWe rating. There are currently three projects monitoring different aspects of the site such as the performance and energy efficiency of the dCHP units, demand and generation profiles and the network impacts Module 5 of EA Technology’s Strategic Technology Programme (STP) has agreed to undertake, in collaboration with the local Network Operator (United Utilities) and Lovell Partnerships, a programme of detailed electrical network monitoring. It is this project on which this paper is concentrates.