March 10, 2021
Community Rooftop Solar Energy Project in Brixton UK
StorTera, a designer and manufacturer of innovative energy storage technology, has supplied and installed a bespoke battery system for EDF and Repowering London. The system was designed to support the CommUNITY project being run by both companies along with UCL’s Energy Institute. This ground-breaking project aims to enable Brixton residents at Elmore House to access electricity generated from a solar PV system on the block’s roof, store it in a battery and trade with one another (peer-to-peer) using blockchain technology.
It also ties into UK Power Network’s Urban Energy Club project where they are looking at how customers can choose to use their virtual allocation of the shared solar generation to provide flexibility to the local electricity network. The existing 36kWp solar array on the roof of Elmore House was installed by Repowering London in 2012 as part of the Brixton Energy Solar 1 project. It was the UK’s first inner-city, co-operatively owned renewable energy project on a social housing estate. StorTera installed three StorTowers including their 3 phase 10kW hybrid inverter along with 22.5kWh capacity of Lithium Ferrous Phosphate battery modules on the roof of the building. These battery modules include StorTera’s novel battery management system to dynamically increase the efficiency and lifetime of battery cells.
The key innovation is an artificial intelligence platform called the TRAICON (tri layer artificial intelligence controller). The TRAICON has the ability to optimise the dispatch of energy storage systems by responding to grid and weather data, improve battery behaviour and divert energy to specific loads in homes or businesses including EV chargers, hot water tanks, heat pumps or any electrical appliances. StorTera’s bespoke system was installed in November 2020 supported by Lambeth Council, Ecolution Group and the Repowering and EDF teams. Considering the mechanics of installing the system on a rooftop site, in London City, during a lockdown, the installation went smoothly without incident.
Maria Brucoli, Smart Energy Systems Manager at EDF said
‘We are very thankful for the support received by StorTera all the way during the project. StorTera’s flexibility and technical know-how have resulted in the delivery of a battery capable of working in a peer-to-peer local energy market interfaced with the DNO (UKPN). By using these new technologies and working with our partners on projects such as this, EDF are demonstrating how dense urban areas can benefit from a low carbon energy system”.
EDF uses StorTera’s application protocol interface (API) to control the battery asset dynamically in order to provide various flexibility services to UKPN. The API allows users to access a range of digital energy vectors such as peer-to-peer energy transfer, vehicle-to-grid charging, energy arbitrage, dual/plunge price tariffs, grid services and asset aggregation. This flexible capability helps clients to achieve their decarbonisation goals while keeping energy costs low.
Tags: ai, colocation, edf, london