A smart energy project led by Smarter Grid Solutions and involving O2 and Siemens as gone live.
The Thames Valley Live Lab project sees a platform – which went live this month – monitor and manage solar PV, electric vehicle (EV) charge points and other flexible electrical equipment located at local authority facilities.
The first energy assets are to connect to the Smart Energy Operations Platform in the coming two months, owned by Reading Borough Council and Wokingham Borough Council.
The platform itself is based on SGS’ ANM Strata fleet distributed energy resources management system (DERMS), with the ANM Strata platform having already been deployed in a partnership with UK Power Networks to help manage distributed energy assets.
The platform will schedule when the assets should be operated, for instance remotely scheduling EV chargepoint operation and building energy use as well as setting EV charge rates, to help save money, reduce CO2 emissions and manage the distributed energy resources (DERs) owned by the local authorities.
Data is to be fed into the other areas of the Thames Valley Live Lab project, which spans areas such as health and transport.
Simon Beasley, network and parking manager at Reading Borough Council and Live Lab project lead, said: “Having a system that can control when and how solar panels, electric vehicle charging points and other energy assets operate is a game changer.
“Having this rich data on our energy assets will help to influence how we develop the transport, mobility, and even health areas of the Live Lab project and local authority operations thereafter.”
Four other councils – Bracknell Forest Council, the Royal Borough of Windsor, Slough Borough Council and West Berks Council – are to connect assets to the project over the course of the coming year.
The project partnership was awarded £4.5 million in 2019 as part of the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport SMART Places Live Labs Programme, a two-year £22.9 million project funded by the Department for Transport and supported by project partners SNC-Lavalin’s Atkins business, EY, Kier, O2, Ringway and WSP.
It is the latest application of SGS’ software, with the company partnering with SSE in October 2019 to launch an energy-as-a-service platform, building upon SGS’ existing platform.
“Our ANM Strata platform provides the basis to manage and track net-zero energy, while underpinning cost savings through better power grid integration and new energy market opportunities including new technical services, network flexibility, and system balancing,” Graham Ault, executive director and co-founder of SGS, said.