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Ten-ampere home avoids grid congestion

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If we make better use of the energy grid, grid congestion will soon be resolved, say the inventors of the '10 Ampère home'. A 'lamppost connection' is all that is needed for this.


The detached ‘all-electric’ house is equipped with everything a modern house needs: heat pump, boiler tank, heat recovery, solar panels and a charger for a plug-in car. Yet it does not need a 3 x 25A power connection, like other houses. The 10A connection that runs to it is as heavy as the power supply for a lamppost. “How is that possible? Simple, because we do not use ‘dumb’ products”, explains Joost Folmer of system developer Eplucon at his stand at the VSK trade fair. “We do not have an inverter that feeds back into the grid during the day or a heat pump that starts up in the evening when it gets colder. Because that is what goes wrong in the average new-build neighbourhood.” Timing is everything in energy management and that is exactly what the Netherlands is bad at. When the sun shines during the day, we feed back into the grid en masse. With the consequence that electricity is no longer worth anything and grid operators impose ‘feed-in penalties’. When we come home from work in the evening and the temperature drops, the heat pumps and hobs start up. The plug of the electric car goes into the socket around the same time. The consequence is an enormous peak consumption in the early evening. For that, a house needs a heavy utility connection. It also demands a lot from the TenneT network

Conductor

The 10 Ampère home is able to avoid this traffic jam on the grid. To this end, the house is equipped with battery systems – between 10 and 18 kW of stackable batteries – and with a smart ‘E-control’ management system. This indispensable link acts as the conductor for the various components.Eplucon (‘Energy Plus Concepts’) uses switchable equipment from others in the home. However, the company developed the software for the management system itself. This ensures that all components communicate with each other. E-control can use weather forecasts and dynamic rates to optimise the energy flow. If the system sees that it will be cold in the evening, it uses its solar energy during the day to warm up the floor. Is there any left over? Then it controls the heat pump to heat up extra tap water. The house has a tank of 100 to 500 litres for this purpose. Are three dark days coming? Then the system buys energy at the best time to charge. It can also trickle charge batteries with DC chargers in low sunlight and hold the content until there is sufficient sunlight again. The user or the Eplucon trained installer can check all the details of what the ‘brain’ is doing on a display.

10 Amp Districts

The 10 Ampere home won the VSK Award 2024 this week, but the concept has been around for four years. At that time, Eplucon built a 10 Ampere villa in its home base in Nunspeet with contractor Allure Bouw. “That solution is only really topical now, because it is suddenly becoming clear everywhere that it is a major problem,” says Folmer. “We saw that back then.” The villa in Nunspeet is built airtight and extremely well insulated (RC value 8.2). The home is integrally designed to properly coordinate energy management, comfort and architecture. If that does not happen, a 10 A connection will quickly become insufficient.However, that does not mean that a light grid connection is impossible for existing buildings. In fact, according to Folmer, even social housing can run on it. “That requires good insulation. But it is nonsense that you cannot make them more sustainable.” Doesn't your oven break down halfway through cooking if all systems have to rely on 10 Ampere? No, a 'beer mat calculation' shows that you can draw 20,000 kWh from it annually. Should be possible with smart control. A charging facility for cars

Forward-looking systems

Folmer therefore calls billions of investments in grid expansions a waste. “It facilitates continuing with ‘dumb’ systems. We need to use the grid more intelligently with forward-looking systems.” He predicts the arrival of complete 10 Ampere districts. These guarantee a stable grid load, because each home can only draw and supply 10 A. The first pilot district is under construction in Nunspeet. It will have seven homes and a super-light energy infrastructure. Eplucon is also in talks with a developer who wants to build a residential area on the site of a demolished greenhouse. The threshold there is the existing grid connection that cannot be reinforced. “Using traditional methods, he can build two hundred homes, using our method seven hundred,” says Folmer. “If the size of the grid connection becomes the determining factor, smart control of electrical systems will be the deciding factor in housing

VSK Award 2024

The 10 Ampère home won the VSK Award 2024 this week. The jury calls the concept an ‘out-of-the-box solution for the grid congestion problem in the Netherlands’ and an example of ‘state-of-the-art new construction with accessible technology’. There were questions about fire safety, environmental impact and availability of the home batteries. The first is unjustified, says Eplucon, because the company uses fully encapsulated battery cells. Availability is an issue: demand currently exceeds supply.Source: Cobouw


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