GBDESC: Grid Balancing via the Domestic Energy Supply Chain

The 12 month First Of A Kind "GBDESC: Grid Balancing via the Domestic Energy Supply Chain" project is focused on installing Home Energy Storage Systems (HESS; including Batteries, Inverters, Meters, and Control Systems) into 400 homes with PV systems, and then in using these systems to provide balancing services to the grid. In doing so the project will firmly establish the technical, regulatory and financial benefits of mass deployment of low carbon energy storage systems, and their aggregated integration into National Grid’s balancing services. The eight partners in the project are Upside Energy, Sharp Labs Europe, Sharp Electronics, Southend-on-sea Borough Council, Sustainable Homes, Stoneford Associates, Imperial College and National Grid. Trends such as growth of renewable generation, plus electrification of heating and transport, are creating dramatic changes on the grid. This creates an £8bn p.a. UK opportunity for storage and Demand Side Response (DSR). The GBDESC project will create the first demonstrator of dynamic balancing of energy supply & demand via the domestic & community energy supply chain at commercial scale. The project will develop a repeatable model to deploy home energy storage systems & use them to provide balancing services to the grid. This opens up a route to deploy tens of GWh of energy storage into domestic properties, thus providing substantial flexibility and hence value to the grid. The GBDESC project will deploy an integrated solution that creates value across the supply chain, thus enabling deployment at scale. It is based on two technology innovations: Upside Energy’s highly scalable & flexible cloud platform for managing energy storage on large numbers of domestic sites & hence aggregating it into a coherent Virtual Energy Store (VES); and Sharp’s Home Energy Management System (HEMS), which manages power flows within a house and makes energy within the HESS available to the VES. The project builds a sustainable supply chain around these two innovations by creating value for HESS manufacturers, installers, landlords, tenants, homeowners and the grid. It also addresses two key supporting factors: financing packages to support repeatable deployment at scale, and policy recommendations to support this deployment.