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NETWORK / 8 / MAY 2018 T he EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration brings together an interdisciplinary and international team of experts to gain a deeper understanding of a whole systems energy approach to the energy trilemma for the UK. Led by Newcastle University, it is a consortium of five re - search intensive universities and 34 public and industrial sector partners. CESI's energy systems research includes smart grid control, demand side response, energy storage, energy systems integration, vehicle-to-grid infrastructure, energy policy, whole systems energy flexibility, and cyber security. It aims to de - velop a picture of the future of the UK's energy system for 2030, 2040 and 2050 that incorporates multiple energy vectors: electric - ity, gas, hydrogen and thermal energy. CESI has energy systems demonstrators and collabora - tions throughout the country. For example, we are a partner in the £65m Faraday Battery Institute on energy storage, and academic lead for a £30m integrated energy systems facil - ity (InTEGReL) in partnership with Northern Gas Networks. We also host a £2m energy storage testbed facility and smart grid lab with industrial partners Siemens and Northern Power- grid, and Siemens' MindSphere -- a cloud-based, collaborative Internet-of-Things operating system. The energy storage test bed and MindSphere are located within a building-as-a-power ENERGY SYSTEMS plant – the Urban Sciences Building (USB) based at New- castle helix, the largest urban development in the country outside London – to understand how buildings can provide services to the energy network. MindSphere enables us to remotely control energy storage which we are currently trialling in the lab at the USB and will connect to the Integrel project with NGN. This allows us to be in the lab at Newcastle and run experiments at the Integrel site in Low Thornley remotely. CESI is for the first time at a national scale studying the val - ue of a whole systems approach to the energy system. What are the socio-technical tools, techniques and pathways for future energy systems? How do we make the energy system both low-carbon and resilient? Does a multi-vector energy system provide smarter and more in- novative solutions to UK energy than our present system? These questions at the moment remain unanswered, but we have the multidisciplinary expertise to bring the UK closer to answering these and other questions about An integrated energy system Dr Sara Walker, associate director of CESI and senior lecturer at Newcastle University and Brett Cherry, energy writer for CESI, Newcastle University, discuss the work of the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI). our energy future. Today we have a largely frag- mented, costly and ineffective energy system that is struggling to deliver a low-carbon energy future to the UK. We need a radical re-think of how we use energy infrastructure, and also urgently need to understand how we enhance it through the digital and big data revolutions. One of the main aims of research at CESI is to focus on how changes in the way we use and generate energy will impact critical energy infra - structure locally and nationally. The intention behind a 'whole energy systems' approach is to resolve grand challenges that our energy networks currently face. These challenges include decarbonisation, the rise of renewable energy generators, cyber-attacks, securing energy supply, potential for city heat networks, repurposing the gas network, and integrating elec - tric vehicles, all which provide numerous opportunities to the energy sector. What's the benefit and value of this approach? An integrated energy system could make possible the deliv- ery of multiple energy vectors together, such as power, heat and gas, in a more efficient and intelligent way. We also have available a variety of ways to store energy be it electrical, thermal, gas or a combination thereof. Each of these can work together in a whole systems ap- proach. For example by convert- ing excess electricity (from wind farms for example) to hydrogen instead of curtailing output we The team at the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI). An energy storage test bed.