PECM Issue 39 2019 | Page 15

For example, one in the Orkney Islands – a new housing development of circa 30 houses - was required by building regulations to have renewable energy, however the network operator was unable to connect all the homes to the grid. We used FlexiGrid to get all the households connected by storing renewable generation from their solar panels in our FlexiGrid-controlled batteries and prevented any excess generation from being exported to the wider grid. “We’re now in a position to begin rolling out our service commercially across the UK and Ireland and that’s not something that would have been possible without the new control platform.” About Solo Energy Solo Energy is a Cork-based renewable energy specialist that deploys and operates distributed energy storage systems, in the form of home batteries and ‘Vehicle-to-Grid’ (V2G) electric vehicle chargers, at any home or business in the UK that wants to host one. Hosts store excess generation in exchange for low cost, 100% renewable electricity, which is supplied by one of Solo’s local energy supply partners. Solo has created an energy trading economy that allows consumers to share renewable energy across the grid via a blockchain-based, peer-to- peer energy trading platform known as FlexiGrid. It centrally controls the batteries and chargers, enabling hosts to share excess local generation quickly and conveniently. “It also includes the first ever fully responsive Operations Management Interface (OMI), which provides improved situational awareness and an intuitive experience through its modern user interface. This enables users to bring together information from all relevant systems and give it real context, allowing them to understand current performance and accurately predict future behaviour. “System Platform also allows screen resolution-independent asset templates to be digitally modelled and shared on any device. This allows Solo to receive insights from its operations regardless of location and keep development and maintenance costs minimal. It also enables application scaling and, using drag and drop technology, assets can be easily deployed onto other machines, allowing users to scale up from a single box solution to multi-tier deployment and delivering a future-proof investment.” As an organisation unrestricted by the safety or latency concerns that would make an on-premise solution necessary, Solo made the decision to host System Platform in a cloud environment, eliminating the need for additional IT infrastructure and delivering a fully scalable and easily deployable system that could be installed with minimal resource. THE OUTCOME By embracing a cutting-edge control platform and hosting it in a cloud environment, Solo has: completed a number of pilot projects which have enabled it to prove its business model in the UK and Ireland moved from a testbed agreement to a commercial agreement with the Cork Internet Exchange by proving the viability of its business model, and begun preparations for its commercial rollout Daniel Dransfield, VP of Engineering at Solo, said: “System Platform has really helped with the pilots we’ve been working on. This digitally connected series of chargers and batteries is known as a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) and enables the flexible supply and demand of energy across the grid. This flexibility helps balance the intermittency of renewable energy generation and allows hosts to receive energy that is stored by other hosts whenever necessary, allowing Solo to shape demand to follow renewable supply. By remotely controlling the hosted batteries and chargers, Solo can charge them from onsite solar and wind generation facilities, or from the grid when sufficient renewable generation is present. When renewable generation decreases, the energy stored in hosts’ batteries or electric vehicles is used to supply homes and businesses instead, enabling the energy to be supplied cheaply. Contact: solutionspt.com/contact-us/ Phone: 0161 495 4600 Website: solutionspt.com Issue 39 PECM 15