Our Cloud Energy interoperability platform could help propel the global transition to low carbon technologies
The global energy market faces a known and intractable obstacle. The lack of a common standard on which to integrate the multitude of physical assets – battery storage, EV chargers, heat pumps and solar panel invertors – that are crucial to the world’s clean energy future. It’s for this reason that we are harbouring a humble optimism for Cloud Energy, a proprietary CC technology platform designed to overcome this interoperability challenge.
Coordinating energy assets is an issue that involves network stakeholders at every level; individuals, communities and energy suppliers included. Currently, home energy management systems (HEMS) offer ways for users to monitor, control and optimise energy consumption behind the meter. But the need to organise assets before the meter, at the low voltage levels of the electricity grid, is putting pressure on a network that simply wasn’t designed for the emergence of widespread local energy generation and increasingly intensive electricity consumption.
With the drive to net zero, the electricity demand will only increase, increasing the need for demand side management (DSM) and demand side generation (DSG) at a local level to maintain balance. By addressing this challenge from the bottom up, rather than centralised top down, we can make the most of MWs of local energy storage, reducing the need to curtail the generation of electricity from offshore wind and removing the costs associated with this curtailment from utility bills. This is why sophisticated control systems are required to deliver operational behaviour that meets the needs of consumers, prosumers and suppliers alike.
Step forward Cloud Energy, which has the capability to support new energy control systems for a wide range of applications. The platform would normally control electricity, but energy vectors such as natural gas, hydrogen or heat could be coordinated using the same approach.
The platform works through a hierarchy of energy agents. Each act on behalf of a user type, which could be a home or business, or a large group within the energy grid. These individuals or groups have different motivations and objectives, which are reflected by their agents.
Thanks to the ability of these agents to make decisions and issue commands and requests, they can deliver rich behaviour on behalf of their users. It means the platform is ideal for building systems that optimise energy use for different users with different objectives. Here are examples of how the system could work to satisfy these differing objectives…
- Home occupants wanting to import electricity at a lower price and export at a higher one
- A distribution network operator (DNO) wanting to increase the grid’s average consumption without exceeding its current peak capacity
- A generator wanting to sell electricity at a higher price
- An aggregator wanting to ensure that its group of users does not exceed its allocated peak power consumption, which could vary with time of use
- In Great Britain, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) wanting to keep the grid always balanced
Already one company, Octopus Energy, is striving to establish a global consortium of hardware manufacturers to simplify the integration of smart energy devices through a uniform technical standard: ‘Project Mercury’. Interoperability and functionality that can support energy grids by balancing supply and demand are top of its agenda. It’s not hard to see why. Alternative solutions – such as investing in proprietary devices with common protocols – are prohibitively expensive and impractical.
On a wider scale, initiatives like Cloud Energy are the way forward if we are to deliver on the promise of smarter, more efficient energy distribution and consumption – and help create a more sustainable, secure network for future generations. Rewiring the grid at massive expense and throwing endless lengths of copper wire at the problem is a non-starter.
Our work in this area chimes with the imperative to deploy the kind of accessible energy flexibility that is enabled by Virtual Power Plants (VPPs). We’ve been exploring how the industry can unlock that flexibility to seize emerging revenue streams, avoid costly infrastructure upgrades and increase reliability and flexibility. Read more about that in our recent report: Plug in, cash in: Pathways to access billions of untapped value in the future grid. Meanwhile if you’d like to discuss any aspect of the Cloud Energy platform, ご連絡, we’d love to hear from you.
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