Meeting UK heat demands in zero emission renewable energy systems using storage and interconnectors

Providing heat without emissions is a critical challenge to reach the 2050 UK net-zero target. Here, we simulate high renewable zero-emission energy system architectures with heat supply based on the major options of district heating, heat pumps, and electrolytic hydrogen boilers. We adopt a novel whole system modelling approach that combines meteorology-driven hourly simulations of demand and supply with storage, flexible technologies, and interconnections on the European scale. Our results show that systems with heat supply based on consumer or district heat pumps require about four times less electricity per unit of heat, with a heat cost about half of that from electrolytic hydrogen boilers. Furthermore, we compare trade-offs between investment in different infrastructure components. For example, we find that, compared to the reference scenario, increasing renewable capacity by 33%, or interconnections by 200%, can lower system storage capacity by up to 50%

High-throughput pipeline for the de novo viral genome assembly and the identification of minority variants from Next-Generation Sequencing of residual diagnostic samples

Motivation: The underlying genomic variation of a large number of pathogenic viruses can give rise to drug resistant mutations resulting in treatment failure. Next generation sequencing (NGS) enables the identification of viral quasi-species and the quantification of minority variants in clinical samples; therefore, it can be of direct benefit by detecting drug resistant mutations and devising optimal treatment strategies for individual patients. / Results: The ICONIC (InfeCtion respONse through vIrus genomiCs) project has developed an automated, portable and customisable high-throughput computational pipeline to assemble de novo whole viral genomes, either segmented or non-segmented, and quantify minority variants using residual diagnostic samples. The pipeline has been benchmarked on a dedicated High-Performance Computing cluster using paired-end reads from RSV and Influenza clinical samples. The median length of generated genomes was 96% for the RSV dataset and 100% for each Influenza segment. The analysis of each set lasted less than 12 hours; each sample took around 3 hours and required a maximum memory of 10 GB. The pipeline can be easily ported to a dedicated server or cluster through either an installation script or a docker image. As it enables the subtyping of viral samples and the detection of relevant drug resistance mutations within three days of sample collection, our pipeline could operate within existing clinical reporting time frames and potentially be used as a decision support tool towards more effective personalised patient treatments. / Availability: The software and its documentation are available from https://github.com/ICONIC-UCL/pipeline / Contact: t.cassarino{at}ucl.ac.uk, pk5{at}sanger.ac.uk / Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Briefings in Bioinformatics online

The impact of social and weather drivers on the historical electricity demand in Europe

Climate change, technological innovation, as well as electrification of energy services to meet carbon targets, have a significant impact on electricity demand magnitude and patterns. Increasing generation from renewable energy sources is already changing supply variability at the hourly and seasonal timescales. Our aim is to conduct a rigorous study of European historical demand, to understand its relationship with social and weather drivers and, therefore, to gain insights into appropriate storage needs. Daily activity profiles exhibit notable differences across European countries, with some of them reporting a consistent demand reduction, up to 25%, during school closures and Christmas festivities. In addition, temperature sensitivity differentiates demand by countries’ latitude (north vs. south), and by technologies (electric heating vs. other fuel based heating). Assuming a 100% renewables scenario, European countries would display quite distinct periodicities and amplitudes of their residual electricity demands. Annual load curves and temperature sensitivities of nations with high electric heating or cooling demand can assist in the prediction of future electricity and other fuel consumption under increased electrification and climate change scenarios. Fourier periodicity and residual demand analysis suggest that, in addition to grid storage, European countries with mutual energy needs – in terms of seasonal demand and generation surplus – might benefit from international trade to balance unmet demand. Our study of consumption variability in response to social and weather drivers constitutes a valuable resource to formulate country-specific demand scenarios, as well as to improve the design of energy system models

Lost Generation: System Resilience and Flexibility

Whole energy system modelling is a valuable tool to support the development of policy to decarbonise energy systems, and has been used extensively in the UK for this purpose. However, quantitative insights produced by such models methods necessarily omit potentially important features of physical and engineering reality. The authors argue that important socio-technical insights can be gained by studying critical events such as the loss of 2.1 GW generation from the electricity system of Great Britain in August, 2019. The present paper uses this event as a starting point for a discussion of the need for additional tools, drawn from the System Architecture literature, to support the design and realisation of future fully decarbonised systems with high penetrations of renewable energy, capable of providing high levels of resilience and flexibility

Phylogenetic characterisation of circulating, clinical influenza isolates from Bali, Indonesia: preliminary report from the BaliMEI project.

BACKGROUND: Human influenza represents a major public health concern, especially in south-east Asia where the risk of emergence and spread of novel influenza viruses is particularly high. The BaliMEI study aims to conduct a five year active surveillance and characterisation of influenza viruses in Bali using an extensive network of participating healthcare facilities. METHODS: Samples were collected during routine diagnostic treatment in healthcare facilities. In addition to standard clinical and molecular methods for influenza typing, next generation sequencing and subsequent de novo genome assembly were performed to investigate the phylogeny of the collected patient samples. RESULTS: The samples collected are characteristic of the seasonally circulating influenza viruses with indications of phylogenetic links to other samples characterised in neighbouring countries during the same time period. CONCLUSIONS: There were some strong phylogenetic links with sequences from samples collected in geographically proximal regions, with some of the samples from the same time-period resulting to small clusters at the tree-end points. However this work, which is the first of its kind completely performed within Indonesia, supports the view that the circulating seasonal influenza in Bali reflects the strains circulating in geographically neighbouring areas as would be expected to occur within a busy regional transit centre

Assessment of future renewable energy scenarios in South Korea based on costs, emissions and weather-driven hourly simulation

The energy policy released by the South Korean government in 2017 aims to gradually increase renewable energy to 20% while reducing the number of nuclear and coal power plants by 2030. The constant controversy over the feasibility of this policy – which arose soon after its release – led to a number of studies focussed on the environmental, economic, political and social issues related to the current policy. However, none of these investigated the hourly dynamics of renewable energy supply, which is crucial to provide an accurate assessment of an energy policy and a technical evaluation of its feasibility. In this study, we analyse four potential renewable energy scenarios for 2030: Business as Usual, Strengthened Solar (i.e. the new energy policy), Strengthened Wind, and our Suggested Scenario. Using a bottom-up energy system modelling approach, we simulated solar and wind power generation at the hourly level, integrating weather data provided by the NASA MERRA-2 reanalysis database. In addition to the feasibility of each scenario, evaluated using annual generation and capacity factors, we also examined the environmental and cost impacts through a number of different measures. Our results show that both the Strengthened Solar and Strengthened Wind scenarios fail to meet the CO2 emission target proposed by the government. From the economic point of view, our cost analysis demonstrates that renewable energy is sustainable for either Strengthened scenarios and cost-effective in both the short term and long term, despite the high capital cost. Instead, our suggested scenario proves to be the optimal solution by meeting the CO2 emission target and minimising costs. Therefore, our hourly simulation provides crucial evidence to assess the new energy policy and to evaluate alternative solutions for the future energy system of South Korea

Heat Decarbonisation Modelling Approaches in the UK: An Energy System Architecture Perspective

Energy models have been widely applied to the analysis of energy system decarbonisation to assess the options and costs of a transition to a low carbon supply. However, questions persist as to whether they are able to effectively represent and assess heat decarbonisation pathways for the buildings sector. A range of limitations have been identified, including a poor spatio-temporal resolution, limited representation of behaviour, and restricted representation of the full technical option set. This paper undertakes a review of existing energy models for heat decarbonisation in the UK, applying the novel perspective of energy system architecture (ESA). A set of ESA-related features are identified (including evolvability, flexibility, robustness, and feasibility), and models are reviewed against these features. The review finds that a range of models exist that have strengths across different features of ESA, suggesting that multiple modelling approaches are needed in order to adequately address the heat decarbonisation challenge. However, opportunities to improve existing models and develop new approaches also exist, and a research agenda is therefore proposed

A Novel CAPN1 Mutation Causes a Pure Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia in an Italian Family

CAPN1 encodes calpain-1, a large subunit of μ-calpain, a calcium-activated cysteine protease widely present in the central nervous system. Mutations in CAPN1 have recently been identified in a complicated form of Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP) with a combination of cerebellar ataxia and corticomotor tract disorder (SPG76). Therefore, CAPN1 is now considered one of those genes that clinically manifest with a spectrum of disorders ranging from spasticity to cerebellar ataxia and represent a link between Spinocerebellar Ataxia and HSP, two groups of diseases previously considered separate but sharing pathophysiological pathways. We here describe clinical and molecular findings of two Italian adult siblings affected with a pure form of HSP and harboring the novel homozygote c.959delA variant (p.Tyr320Leufs*73) in the CAPN1 gene. Although the reason why mutations in CAPN1 may cause heterogeneous clinical pictures remains speculative, our findings confirm that the spectrum of the CAPN1-linked phenotypes includes pure HSP with onset during the third decade of life. Further studies are warrantied in order to clarify the mechanism underlying the differences in CAPN1 mutation clinical expression