Keeping Africa safe when the lights go out
Energy storage experts Swanbarton are leading a consortium to solve one of the developing world’s most distressing energy problems. Swanbarton is working with the University of Bath, the University of Botswana’s Clean Energy Research Centre and battery supplier Yuasa. The project has been awarded co-funding by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, and by the […]
The capacity market auctions, Winter 2017 / 2018: certainty or uncertainty in the storage sector?
There’s a rigid timetable for the Capacity Market Auctions in GB. Probably, the timetable is the most certain of all the variables in the auction process. Last Friday, ( 1 December 2017), the EMR delivery body published details of the projects and their status in the prequalification phase of the auction. Our interest is in […]
Time of use tariffs bring domestic storage one step closer to economic viability
Thus far, domestic energy storage has been a cool thing with which to impress your mates, and lately it’s been about the cheapest way to get anything with a Tesla logo on it. But it’s been a long way from being the sort of economic no-brainer that’ll secure an enduring mass market. This week brings […]
The next monster child of the Welfare State?
At the Community Energy Markets Conference the other week, several delegates picked up on Professor Furong Li’s remark that future energy markets are likely to offer tiered prices reflecting tiers of quality of supply. For example, a price for locally generated electricity may be low, but the reliability of generation will be low as well. […]
New Market Models for Community Energy Conference
Developing the Technology and Market Models for Local Energy Markets Thursday 29th January 2015 Community and Localised energy supply can benefit consumers, small generators and network operators. However, in order to implement this new, efficient energy supply, communities need a new market model. This conference discussed the role, technology and development of local energy markets. […]
Community energy ice cream
Community energy, just like ice cream, seems nice to everyone, but it comes in a number of flavours. Some people have their own favourite flavour, but some just don’t seem to care. The Rt Hon Ed Davey recently blessed the ice cream counter that is community energy, declaring that he was a big fan, and […]
UK Financial Conduct Authority nudges community groups towards LEMs
UK Government says it’s keen to encourage localisation, including localising the provision of energy. The Government said, in its Community Energy Strategy of April 2014, that it sees a strong role for communities in helping the UK to meet energy and climate change challenges. The Government’s modifications to its incentive regimen (feed-in-tariffs and renewable heat […]
EXSTORM results update: prices tracking abundance
EXSTORM’s discrete-event simulation work continues to illuminate the behaviour of Local Energy Markets (LEMs), and of how free peer-to-peer markets (with energy prices set mutually between households or small businesses, in real time) work with different kinds of trading heuristic. Here we have a view of a day’s trading in a LEM, with posted-price trading […]
Early EXSTORM results: performance of Generalized Derivative Follower price setting
The EXSTORM project is starting to deliver results. We’ve been running full-scale in silico simulations of local energy market trading, and testing the viability of different trading heuristics. For example, we’ve put a good deal of work into the possibilities of posted-price trading, and the various heuristics for setting offer-to-sell prices and buy-limit prices. We […]
Community energy and local markets
Pressure is mounting to improve the environmental credentials of our energy supply – and electricity is often taken as the place to start. The number of community energy projects grows, and with good reason, for local generation and increased consumption can reduce transmission and distribution losses, as well as disrupting the business of the major […]