Green utility Ecotricity has turned to Germany’s Next Kraftwerke to help operate a future virtual power plant (VPP).
Ecotricity said it intends to use the VPP software to help it meet its battery storage and flexibility ambitions, which have been on the utility’s periphery for some time.
Ecotricity will become Next Kraftwerke’s first to implement NEMOCS, a software-as-a-service solution which enables thousands of distributed assets to be connected, networked and optimised.
Next Kraftwerke said the solution enables third parties to launch VPPs without the need for investing in infrastructure, further adding capabilities to enter these networks into frequency response or balancing reserve markets.
Mark Meyrick, head of smart grids at Ecotricity, said the firm had elected to go with Next Kraftwerke after watching its activities in energy flexibility and becoming “big admirers” of theirs.
“As a result we’re very happy and excited to be partnering with such an innovative organisation who match our pioneering values and commitment to renewable energy, to deliver this innovative project, which will help enable our aspirations in the storage space, amongst other benefits,” he said.
Next Kraftwerke specifically started to target utilities throughout Europe after launching its NEMOCS software earlier this year.
“NEMOCS was built upon everything we have learned in the past 10 years, because we strongly believe it is important to use all the flexibility already available on the market to make the energy system more efficient.
“NEMOCS gives us a way to do this. We are really excited to start working with Ecotricity, one of the green energy pioneers, to optimize their forecasting and production,” Jochen Schwill, chief executive and co-founder at Next Kraftwerke, said.
