Free local markets make organic microgrids investable
Swanbarton’s trading platform makes microgrid investments attractive to some of the poorest people in the world. It enables a local community to grow its own microgrid organically, adding links and energy resources as the opportunity or need arises. Persuading households to invest in electricity microgrids needs a compelling business proposition. Households easily see the benefit […]
The benefits of minute-by-minute local energy trading
In our recent post The Minuteman of the Half-Hour, we explained some of the benefits of local energy trading based on one minute settlement periods. The whitepaper below, produced for Swanbarton’s LEMDEx local energy market project, explores the issue in a little more depth. A Local Energy Market (LEM) is an intuitively simple idea. A […]
LEMDEx Key Findings
A Whitepaper Swanbarton led the LEMDEx project from January to June 2019. This Whitepaper presents distilled learnings from the project. LEMDEx (Local Energy Markets in Devon and Exeter) was funded by Innovate UK under the Prospering from the Energy Revolution Programme, within the Smart Local Energy Systems stream. The project was a 6-month feasibility study […]
The Minuteman of the half hour
The Concord Minuteman – “Minutemen were civilian colonists during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute’s notice, hence the name. They provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that allowed the colonies to respond immediately to war threats.” The burgeoning popularity of electric vehicles and the increase in renewable […]
Lighting the dark waters of local energy
As long ago as 2016 we started warning of the information security risks in community energy schemes. In the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, we said that: There are many community energy schemes. Their number and variety are increasing briskly. They bring new kinds of information into existence and they handle existing kinds […]
Electricity access without the big networks
We’ve always taken on the challenges in the energy sector. We were champions of energy storage right from our beginning. Now we’re grappling with the challenge of electricity network costs. In the UK, only about 34% of our electricity bills are paying for electricity generation. We pay almost as much as that towards the cost […]
Energy access with a future: minigrid markets
We are delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded grant support through the Energy Catalyst programme of Innovate UK and the Department for International Development, to make commercial trials of the new product EMBLEM in Rwanda and Nepal. After a successful proof-of-concept trial on the Isle of Iona, Scotland, we have teamed up with local […]
Local energy market project to help reduce costs and carbon emissions
An innovative project which will help reduce carbon emissions and energy costs, by increasing the use of local renewable energy, starts this month. The Local Energy Market in Devon and Exeter (LEMDEx) project is grant-supported by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy through the Prospering from the Energy Revolution Programme. It will be […]
Worth its weight in carbon
Here’s more news from our trial of a liberated market for electrical power on the island of Iona, with our partner Scene. Over the past quarter-year, our Real Time Trading Platform has been facilitating energy trading, in real time, for thirty homes. Each of them has had a smart agent negotiating for it within the […]
Cutting Sark?
BBC reported yesterday that the island of Sark would lose its electricity supply at the end of November, because Sark Electricity Limited (SEL) says that it can’t afford to generate power at the 52p/kWh price cap that the local regulator has imposed. The generation is diesel-powered, and shipping diesel to the island is costly. There’s […]