The Cornwall Local Energy Market is proving to be a very interesting look into the future of how flexibility can provide multiple benefits to the grid infrastructure. Hyperion client sonnen have lead the way on the residential energy storage VPP, installing 100 batteries. The project also includes solar PV, vanadium redox flow batteries, efficiency monitoring, blockchain peer to peer trading and CHP. This article gives a great overview of how the different technologies are interacting to provide real value. Flexibility technologies could provide up to £10's billion of savings by 2050! The data provided by this trial will be hugely valuable for assessing how best to move forward with flexibility technologies providing a great foundation for other areas to follow suit.
Analysis by the Carbon Trust and Imperial College shows that deploying flexibility technologies could save the UK as a whole £17-40 billion by 2050 through reducing expenditure in new generation, peaking plants and network reinforcement. With talk of a decentralised, decarbonised energy system increasingly becoming action, LEMs provide a new pathway to be tested. Centrica’s trial, looking into the use of flexible demand, generation and storage across both the domestic and business sectors, could provide much-awaited answers. With domestic installations complete, monitoring equipment in, and a platform almost ready to go, Centrica’s LEM looks set to revolutionise the way in which Cornwall’s energy system works, albeit on a relatively small scale for now. But if successful, its impact on the energy system across the UK has the potential to be momentous.
unknownx500
