Utility Week

9 ISSUE 03 MAY/2019 because it controls power flow in the magnetic domain, which offers natural filtering and is easily scalable. ese others work well at low power, but prices rise greatly as the power level they can deal with increases, which limits them in ways that the Exchangers are not. He expects the upgrade to Exchangers to be like our vehicular transition. "No one buys horses and carts because cars do a better job." Next comes the Faraday Grid, described as the architecture for the future electricity system. It operates with autonomous decentralised control, likened to the internet, with "no master controller sitting over the top of the grid" – with Faraday "the grid is able to dynamically balance itself". e Faraday Grid is the cumulation of many Exchangers, each autonomously providing local benefits, which then stack into system-wide improvements. rough the Exchangers' greater stabilisation, theoretically the grid should be able to handle greater percentages of renewable energy and operate with better efficiency. And the business model? Faraday, however, will not sell Exchangers outright. As a service provider, it will be contracted by energy stakeholders to install Faraday technology. en they will work together to provide cost balancing and stability services at, hopefully, a cheaper price than is currently available. " e business model is not just about selling product, because the value is really around what it delivers to the system overall. In one sense you could give the devices away for free and generate revenue from the energy as a service model." Williams says "in the UK, National Grid is spending over £1 billion a year balancing the system" and "that cost is only projected to go up, in 10 to 15 years that cost is projected to be over £10 billion a year". He sees Faraday Grid as the answer, believing that an Exchanger's improved ability to balance and stabilise will diminish the need for balancing on the generation side. "Faraday provides a service in this balancing market to the overall grid, at a cost saving to the consumer, because it's at a lower cost, and so the utility gets a benefit out of it, Faraday Grid gets a benefit." e third layer, Emergent, jointly owned with Amp, is a platform for "transactive energy" integrated directly into Faraday's hardware and software. e platform will allow more players to buy and sell energy services, with Faraday earning some remuneration for facilitating transactions. With Emergent, Faraday is aiming to improve accessibility to the energy market and balance supply and demand across the system by using the fluctuating price as an operational mechanism. It claims it "enables the network to cope with high and low demand periods by using pricing that alters" and believes that by being built into a core grid component, its marketplace will be best positioned to provide the most effective service. In 2018, Glasgow's Power Network Demonstration Centre performed a series of comparisons between a prototype Exchanger and a normal transformer, concluding that the Exchanger performed better in each of the 16 tests performed. From this, Faraday has been eager to push the idea that in validating the effectiveness of a single Exchanger, the system-wide results have also been proven to be accurate. UK Power Networks is set to begin trials of a Faraday Grid soon, the results of which should provide a clearer picture of its abilities on a network level and if they're good, to convince sceptics. e need for improving capacity on the network is almost certain. "With the rise of EVs, the electrification of heat potentially, we've got some really big fundamental changes coming on the consumption side, and we've already started big changes on generation," observes Williams. "It really comes down to this old way we've managed the electricity grid for so long just isn't fit for purpose any more, so for us it's all about providing that platform so we can have more renewables, we can have electric vehicles, that's what we're trying to achieve." // This old way we've managed the electricity grid for so long just isn't fit for purpose any more, so for us it's all about providing that platform so we can have more renewables // HERE'S AN IDEA... SAFE-ENTRY DOORBELL A safe-entry digital doorbell intended to safeguard vulnerable customers, which was first proposed at last year's Utility Week Live (UWL), is now at the advanced feasibility stage. e product is intended to reassure water and energy customers that utility callers are genuine. It was one of the ideas to come out of the UWL Hackathon, which took place during the event at the NEC in Birmingham. e brain-storming event was supported by Microsoft and United Utilities, who assessed the best ideas afterwards and asked app developer Apadmi to see how it could be developed. After considering a number of technologies, Apadmi is basing the product on technology that would only allow it to be activated by authorised callers, from their mobiles. Each customer's device would have a unique code that would be integrated into a field service officer's job management system."It's essentially a cryptographic solution, not dissimilar to the way car keys unlock cars," explains Adam Fleming, chief technology officer at Apadmi. e next stage is to look at the commercial feasibility and see where the costs would be borne. "Something like this is highly needed and useful for vulnerable people to give them reassurance and peace of mind," he adds. e Hackathon process is being repeated at this year's event and is focused on tackling two big industry challenges – electric vehicles and smart workforce. Apadmi and Microsoft will be demonstrating the prototype doorbell on the first day of UWL. For more details, go to www.utilityweeklive.co.uk.

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