Automated Feasibility Assessments for Renewable Energy Systems

Renewable energy generation has become the most cost-effective method of generating energy. Onsite renewable energy generation such as solar or wind, particularly when coupled with energy storage (e.g. a battery), can reduce overall energy costs, deliver significant carbon savings and provide energy security in the event of a disruption to grid supplied energy. Therefore, in this climate emergency era, a quick and accurate way to jump-start a business or individual's onsite renewable deployment journey is needed.

This project builds on the success of the award-winning OnGen MVP, a web-enabled tool that generates objective and accurate feasibility assessments for a range of renewable and low-carbon technologies via an innovative and user-friendly user interface. Using geographic data sets about the site characteristics and energy consumption profiles showing the user's energy needs, a business case considering multiple technologies can be produced in minutes. This comprehensive report suggests the optimum system size to maximum return on investment and carbon savings, ultimately highlighting which technology is best for the user. In addition, the user is signposted to accredited installers, project managers and funding options, providing a guide through the process of successfully deploying low-carbon, cost-effective onsite renewable energy.

The OnGen MVP significantly reduces the time and cost to assess a site's potential to benefit from renewable energy directly, the level of manual intervention needed to examine site-specific geographic data poses a hurdle to the assessment of large portfolios such as that of a housing association or local authority.

This project takes learning from the OnGen MVP project and involves a developing a brand new tool with different architecture that will automate the assessment process across large portfolios of sites to recommend renewable energy generation and energy storage technologies from just the site address producing a comprehensive analysis of renewable technology feasibility in seconds.

The new platform will thus improve accessibility and reach a wider audience of non-energy experts, further increasing rates of onsite renewable technology deployment. Ultimately, the new renewable feasibility assessment software will directly respond to the UK's net zero by 2050 target and help address the pressing climate emergency worldwide.