Smart home technology provider myenergi has put out a call to its customers to participate in a new flexibility trial.
Electric vehicle (EV) drivers with a zappi charger that choose to take part will allow the company to make minor adjustments to how and when they charge their vehicles, to help reduce stress on the electricity grid.
This beta trial will be the next step towards myenergi offering demand side response services directly to customers, and follows on from successful smaller scale technology demonstration trials run by the company.
“While flexibility in today’s energy system is provided mostly by fossil fuel generation, customers joining our trial will help us to understand their role in cumulatively helping to replace these high emitters with smarter, cleaner capacity – a crucial step on the UK’s journey to net zero,” said Dr Chris Horne, chief technology officer of myenergi.
EV charging is expected to be a key source of flexibility in the future, helping to balance intermittent generation from renewables as well as peaks and troughs of demand on the system.
Currently, there is around 6GW of demand side flexibility in Britain, but National Grid ESO is expecting to require more than 100GW by 2050.
Meanwhile unmanaged EV charging could add up to 20GW to peak electricity demand by the middle of the century. Smart EV charging – including demand side response services – could reduce this peak by up to 15GW.
In June, the Electric Vehicle Smart Charge Point Regulations came into force, mandating that EV chargers are smart charging ready, easing the path to utilising EVs for flexibility services. Current± recently ran a webinar on these regulations and how they could encourage demand side response with Shell Recharge Solution’s regional manager UK & Nordics, Euan Moir.
There has been a number of trials evaluating the potential of smart charging recently, including the Flexibly-Responsive Energy Delivery (FRED) trial, run by a consortium including myenergi. It found that smart charging can reduce the cost of supplying electricity by 26%.