We are moving away from the traditional, centralised fossil-fuel power stations towards a local low-carbon energy economy – where decentralised generation turns buildings into mini power plants and communities take control of their energy supply. Common sense tells us that there should be financial benefits when electricity is consumed near to where it is generated.
Piclo, Britain’s first online peer-to-peer marketplace for renewable electricity, is the first step to realising those benefits. The service, trialled by Open Utility and Good Energy, offers unprecedented customer empowerment and removes barriers to individual participation in the electricity market.
For the first time, business consumers such as the Eden Project could buy their electricity direct from the source. Cornwall emerged as a buzzing local energy market – with some generators, such as the community-owned turbines at Gorran, supplying almost 100 per cent of their electricity within 33 miles.
We believe consumers are more likely to use renewable energy if people feel emotionally connected to the source. Open Utility has developed a change proposal for Ofgem, so that consumers and generators can be charged more fairly for using the local distribution grid. Using peer-to-peer energy matching to determine how much of the grid has been used, the new methodology has the potential to unlock billions of pounds for decentralised generation and communities over the next ten years.
James Johnston, CEO and co-founder, Open Utility