DistGen - Market analysis for miniGRID (Controller for managing diverse local energy supplies and consumer demand)

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Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK

£123,000

Jan. 1, 2012

March 31, 2012

There is an increasing awareness that renewable energy production is important, for a wide
range of environmental, social and economic reasons, as electricity from fossil fuels gets ever
more expensive and scarce. Since key producer countries like Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq and
Iran have unpredictable socio-economic circumstances of their own, the supply of fossil fuels
is increasingly unpredictable. Furthermore, the cost and reliablity of energy from the national
grid is increasingly called into question - it needs expensive upgrading and there is no
sustainable plan to do so.
As a result, many local communities are beginning to use a variety of energy production
sources. Typically electricity from the national grid is being supplemented by local renewable
energy from solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal and hydro facilities. We at DistGen have
an idea that this diverse range of local energy production facilities needs to be managed by a
local computer-controlled device, in order to manage in real-time the various local energy
sources that are available and to match local consumer demand.
We call this device the Semi-autonomous miniGRID Controller or "SmC".
We do not believe that such a device exists at this scale which addresses the needs of a local
community, and yet we believe that this is the scale that is best suited to communities taking
relevant and appropriate action to address these critical matters for themselves.
This project is clearly innovative as there is no such device commercially available presently
at this scale, and obviously the project has direct environmental, social and economic benefits
in the UK and abroad.
Our objective is to enable communities to deploy a range of local energy production in an
integrated way, so that diverse local facilities can be deployed effectively and efficiently.
Without a device such as the SmC each local community will have to solve this integration of
local demand and supply for themselves.