Tag Archives: ECoE

Is Distributed Energy Storage on Ofgem’s Roadmap?

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In the first of my reports from the Regen SW “Community Energy Markets” conference in Bristol last Thursday I’ll be highlighting references in several of the presentations to what I like to call “Distributed Energy Storage“, which encompasses a whole lot more than just the battery packs in electric vehicles.

The first person to mention the subject was Jeff Hardy, who is Head of Future Consumers & Sustainability at Ofgem. His presentation was on the topic of “Non-traditional business models: Supporting transformative change in the energy market” which deserves an article all of its own in due course. However whilst discussing “rapid technological innovation” Jeff pointed out that “battery storage is the current flavour of the month”. After that Sonya Bedford, Head of Renewable Energy at Stephens Scown solicitors, also hinted at the subject in her talk about “Local supply models” in which she mentioned “Demand Side Response” and “Local Balancing Units”.

At the conclusion of the morning session Merlin Hyman, chief executive of Regen SW and our host for the day, asked if there were any questions from the floor. Nobody else seemed very keen to put their hand up, so I waved my arm in the air and was duly invited to stand up, state my name and affiliation, and then pose the panel a question. In the event I actually asked two. The first was to enquire if anybody else present was interested in international smart grid standards apart from me, since the LBUs that Sonya had mentioned seemed to me to come within the remit of the IEC 62325 standard working group which I am part of. Then I asked the panel whether the battery packs in electric vehicles were anywhere near being “flavour of next month” in the UK as yet.

Nobody responded to my first question, but Merlin framed my second question to the panel in terms of the recent “Powerwall” announcement from Tesla Energy. I was both pleased and somewhat surprised when Jeff pointed out that V2G was indeed on his radar screen, since he is “fascinated by EVs” and the “traditional battery worries have been overcome by technology”. Sonya was then good enough to mention that I had said much the same thing at the AGM of Exeter Community Energy earlier in the week.

After lunch James Owen, commercial director of Public Power Solutions, started off by giving us a history lesson about local electricity generation in the UK.  Then he went on to discuss the benefits of “Local Balancing Units”, “street level storage solutions” and “a true local smart micro-grid” amongst other things, using both Swindon and the Danish island of Bornholm as examples. James freely admitted to having pinched an infographic of Bornholm, so I’ve taken the liberty of pinching one of his! Here is PPS’s template for a future Bristol, or Bornholm, or the Isle of Wight, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter.

See if you can spot the difference between this version and the one on the PPS web site. It seems those recent additions are Tesla Powerpacks, and in my own vision of a future sunny Southwest England the cars under the solar PV canopy at the park and ride would be connected to similar “black boxes” that incorporate V2G functionality.

Having finally got the preface out of the way, I’d like at long last to mention some alternative battery filled “black boxes” from suppliers other than Tesla Energy. For “grid scale” battery storage you can repurpose EV battery packs like Sumitomo, or use batteries designed for the task from the likes of Saft.

Moving down to the domestic scale I note that for some strange reason the solar PV equipped dwelling in a future Bristol/Bornholm lacks a V2x equipped garage similar to the one shown in the V2G banner at the top of this article. Moving indoors Moixa’s Maslow predates the Powerwall by a long way, and is designed to power a DC circuit for LED lighting, computers etc. Quite possibly prompted by Elon Musk‘s recent announcement, Samsung have also launched a domestic version of their modular Energy Storage System (or ESS for short). Stefan Quandt (of BMW fame) has launched the SolarWatt MyReserve, which has already won an award at the recent ees Europe exhibition over in Germany. Varta also launched their Engion Element “storage for beginners” at ees Europe. Here’s how they looked at the show:

and just in case you haven’t yet tasted the flavour of the month, here’s a Tesla Powerwall for your delectation:

As you’ve probably gathered by now I have a lot more to say about all of this and more, including covering Anthony Price of Swanbarton’s talk dedicated to “Local balancing using storage”. However for the moment at least I cannot help but wonder what Ofgem make of all this “rapid technological innovation”, not to mention the potential associated “non-traditional business models” and last but by no means least, international smart grid standards!

Catherine Mitchell Meets Exeter Community Energy

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On Tuesday I attended a meeting organised by Exeter Community Energy. The theme for the evening was “UK Energy Policy and the role of community energy”, and the main speaker was Catherine Mitchell who is Professor of Energy Policy at Exeter University, and was a lead author in the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 3’s recent fifth assessment report. To summarise briefly, Catherine had many more good words to say about community energy than she did about Great British Energy Policy!

It quickly became apparent that Catherine felt that the change “from ‘dirty’ energy to sustainable energy” is happening much faster elsewhere in Europe, and further afield, than it is here in the UK. After taking a while to consider a suitable epithet she settled on “constipated” as the best descriptor of UK energy policy!

Energy is always political, and has become much more political under the coalition government. Rational evidence based decision making has stopped. The current focus is on nuclear power, with only lip service being paid to renewable generation, demand management, demand reduction and community energy generation.

What positive changes that are taking place are “moving in from Europe”. Catherine moved on to give an overview of the current state of play of electricity generation across Europe. Broadly demand in the 21st century has been constant, with a slight dip due to the recession in 2009. The renewables’ share of  total generation has been increasing throughout that period, and the most recent figures show much more renewable capacity being constructed than fossil fuels or nuclear.

In the UK wholesale prices are the 3rd highest in Europe, and interconnections with other countries, which are “very helpful for renewables”, are lacking. Great Britain and Poland “are trying to water down” the EU 2030 framework for climate and energy policies. Conventional utilities are however “under threat” due to the low marginal costs of renewable energy sources, which undermines their business model. However in the UK “self reinforcing governance” makes it hard for new entrants to challenge the “Big 6”, who currently have 91% of the UK electricity market, and even more for energy overall. However “despite this, there are some changes”.

Community energy policy is “very inconsistent”, but there are new demand side entrants such as Tempus Energy, and new financial models from the likes of OVO Energy. Combined heat & power “is starting to come together”, but “the Big 6 don’t want to change. People need to start to do things differently”. Here’s how the UK energy cookie currently crumbles according to Tempus:

and here’s a video in which they explain how matters might be improved by using “a smarter approach for everybody”:

At that point the questions from the audience began. The one that most interested me concerned energy storage, and the possibility of getting paid for providing that useful service. According to Catherine “Norway is doing wonderful stuff, Germany has started, but there are no plans in Great Britain”. A member of the audience pointed out that the Renewable Energy Association had recently launched “UK Energy Storage” to lobby government, apparently:

The trade body for all storage technologies across the UK

I waved my hand in an endeavour to point out that the Electricity Storage Network has in fact been around for quite some time now, and say they are:

The industry association for the promotion of electrical energy storage.

However my turn to ask a question didn’t come around until right at the end of the evening. It seemed apparent that Catherine wasn’t very impressed by current UK energy markets, and I wondered:

Whether any future market based on “Anglo Saxon Capitalism” would be up to the job of solving the “energy/climate conundrum”?

Catherine assured me that she didn’t see capitalism going away for the foreseeable future. The slides from her presentation can be downloaded from the IGov web site.

Last year, in her role as an IPCC lead author, Catherine Mitchell also gave a presentation about UK energy policy at the Transformational Climate Science conference at Exeter University. Here it is:

Catherine also published an article on the IGov web site after that conference. For additional background information please also read:

“In Matters Of Climate Change, The Environmental Requirement Must Take Precedent Over Short Term Economic Goals”

Catherine’s conclusion was that:

We as individuals and communities in civil society have to do all we can to get our politicians, neighbours, businesses, energy suppliers and so on to take climate change seriously. Climate and energy policy must take note of the IPCC warning and act now.