The three companies are co-founding The Living Grid, a movement of corporate energy users which aims to create 200MW of flexible power across the UK by 2020. The three co-founders alone expect to provide 39MW of flexible capacity by this time.
It is the first time that a working partnership has been created by leading businesses in the UK to help modernise and relieve the pressure on the country’s existing, static electricity system. Corporate energy users are uniquely placed to lead the way in influencing the demand-side of the electricity grid because their energy needs have a significant impact on peaks and troughs in electricity usage.
Brought together by sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future, the Living Grid aims to realise a radically new energy ecosystem that’s inspired by nature: responsive, intelligent and adapted to make full use of renewable sources of energy. In its first year, it is focused on enabling energy consumers to communicate and to adjust their individual use of electricity to benefit the system as a whole.
It is starting by connecting large corporate energy users’ equipment with smart technology powered by founding tech partner Open Energi. Its ‘intelligent demand response technology’, allows equipment to continuously adjust its electricity usage to adapt to peaks and troughs in demand and supply across the grid without affecting its performance.
When electricity supply can’t keep up with demand at peak times, connected equipment is asked to decrease consumption momentarily to free up electricity for other consumers. When there is spare supply, equipment can increase demand in order to make use of the surplus.
Sainsbury’s, United Utilities and Aggregate Industries have all piloted the ground-breaking technology with Open Energi, and will continue to roll it out across their operations nationally, with expected carbon savings for the country of 88,764 (almost 90,000) tonnes by 2020.
By choosing to play an active role in balancing supply and demand through consuming electricity flexibly, companies in the Living Grid are rewarded by the National Grid with an additional revenue stream that they could plough back into making their business more energy efficient. By scaling down consumption at peak periods, they also avoid peak-time pricing, thus reducing their energy bills in the long term.
Jonathan Dobson, United Utilities’ Sustainability Strategy Manager, said: “Energy is one of our biggest costs and it’s vital that we get smarter at how we use it. In supporting the Living Grid we’re proud to show the huge scope for the water industry to use electricity in a more flexible way – meaning sustainable lower bills for our customers and a move towards a lower carbon economy.”
Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director of Forum for the Future, added: “Our existing energy system was designed for another era, when our power was supplied by big, fossil fuel generators – and before the internet. It’s old and inefficient and simply isn’t equipped to deal with higher percentages of renewable energy, more distributed energy, storage and so on. Put this together with the urgent call to achieve a 1.5°C future in COP21 and it’s clear the UK energy industry finds itself at a pivotal moment.“