Utility Week

11 ISSUE 02 FEB/2019 report predicted that the cost of the two technologies used together will have a payback period of below 15 years by 2020. Individual households and commercial buildings could operate off-grid for months at a time by 2025, it added. Technological changes needed to enable this transition include greater automation of demand response, so that consumers do not have to change their habits in response to grid requirements, the Green Alliance believes. Its senior policy adviser Chaitanya Kumar points out that several energy companies are now trialling new technology such as time-of-use tariffs that can use automation. " is creates a condition where consumers don't have to work out when to switch the washing machine on, the system will do it for them," he says. e idea of someone controlling equipment externally may be too much for some, and would inevitably raise a lot of questions, he says. However, the same questions could apply to other technologies we have already accepted, he points out. Kumar believes many people working in the energy sector are not willing to come to terms with the fact that the transition to a prosumer model is already under way. " is distributed energy system is coming whether we like it or not, so the best thing to do is to work hard towards managing it, not try to stop it," he says. CHARLES BRADSHAW-SMITH Chief executive and co-founder, SmartKlub SmartKlub is pioneering several business models and technologies in partnership with cities, helping citizens to form community energy groups. During a previous role at Eon, Charles Bradshaw- Smith had first-hand experience of the issues surrounding the development of community and smart energy systems in other cities in Europe. " e reason community energy hasn't taken off is because it's costly to do so in comparison to the value you can create, so unless you can snowball it and get lots of services and communities paying homogeneously for many things, it probably isn't going to work," he says. "I had a kind of Eureka moment that the key to more community energy was to realise that the focus should be on business models, not just the technology," he adds. Innovations in the business model and role of the community will enable the benefits of the technologies to be maximised, Bradshaw-Smith says. Consequently, SmartKlub is working on several different services. e most advanced is its Energy Service Company – dubbed the Easy ESCO – which is up and running at Trent Basin in Nottingham. e community energy scheme will enable residents of a new 250-acre brownfield land development on the edge of the city centre to generate, store and use solar electricity. SmartKlub will manage the energy assets and provide energy services to the residents, including storing and selling locally generated energy to the grid at peak times. Profits made by the ESCO cut energy bills for residents who opt in to join the scheme. e project boasts the largest community energy battery of its type in Europe, supplied by Tesla. is can store 2.1MWh of energy, delivering 500kW of power. e project is a collaboration with the University of Nottingham, where professor Mark Gillott from the faculty of engineering is leading the work. e project aims to make the technology commercially viable through new business models in order to drive adoption, he says. Monitoring technology will be installed in the homes when residents move in, Bradshaw-Smith says. Residents moving into the development are well aware of the ESCO, and for 80 per cent of them it's part of the attraction of moving to Trent Basin, he says. SmartKlub is also working on a platform that will use satellite imagery to calculate how much PV energy any home or business could generate on its roof. ermal imagery will also be used to understand the energy efficiency of a building, and opportunities for improving it. e firm's platform links to social media, so communities can easily set up a Facebook page to organise a community group, and put out tenders to local technology suppliers. "It needs to be easy so normal people can do it around normal lives," he says. ENERGY TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURS // I had a kind of Eureka moment that the key to more community energy was to realise that the focus should be on business models, not just the technology //

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