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Living Lab to partner with Lightsource Labs, bolstering solar PV & storage trial capability

Innovative companies developing products or services that deliver domestic flexibility using battery storage or solar PV will benefit from a new partnership between Lightsource Labs and Energy Systems Catapult’s real-world test environment – the Living Lab.

Lightsource Labs develop and commercialise technologies that unlock flexibility and value in energy assets at the grid edge integrating residential solar, storage and EV charging management.

The Living Lab is a safe and affordable, real-world test environment of over 200 homes that helps innovators rapidly design, market-test and launch smart energy products, services and business models, including:

  • Energy devices – eg. heat pumps, electric vehicles
  • Energy efficiency – eg. building retrofit
  • Smart home controls – eg. multi-device control
  • Energy services – eg. Heat as a Service
  • Energy flexibility – eg. Time-of-Use tariffs, price signals, Vehicle-2-Grid

A ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ has been signed between the two businesses with the aim of integrating Lightsource’s smart Home Energy Management technology – Tribe – that can monitor, control and optimise electricity from generation, storage and consumption devices.

  • The partnership bolsters the Living Lab’s capacity to run trials with innovations in battery storage & solar PV.

By connecting Tribe to the Catapult’s digital integration platform, data can be shared and analysed during trials.

Why do we need a Living Lab?

Living Lab business leader Rebecca Sweeney explains

Living Lab business lead, Rebecca Sweeney, said: “The Living Lab is intended to represent future domestic energy markets where smart devices in the home can respond to control and price signals to offer system flexibility. We also want to collect data from technology in homes to understand future consumer energy consumption and behaviour.

“Integration with Lightsource Labs’ platform is another step in making the Living Lab the UK’s premier whole systems test and demonstration environment for the home energy market.

“A range of innovators will be able to rapidly test and launch to market all kinds products and services that deliver flexibility. While networks can run flexibility trials where devices are controlled to manage demand pressures on electricity networks.”

Ben Kott, CEO at Lightsource Labs said: “The team at Lightsource Labs have worked hard to develop world-class technology that unlocks flexibility in assets at the grid edge. One of our key focus areas has been on the integration with third-party devices, meaning we can provide a technology-agnostic solution to energy management. Energy Systems Catapult are key to driving forward innovation in the UK’s energy system, and we’re delighted to partner with them to offer our energy management solution for their Living Lab.”

The integration with Lightsource Labs’ Tribe platform will add to existing trial devices connected with the Living Lab’s bespoke digital integration platform created by SysMech, including:

  • Hildebrand – smart meters
  • tado° – heating controls
  • Samsung SmartThings – Internet-of-Things hub
  • ev.energy – smart charging platform

Utilising a range of housing types and consumer demographics spread around the UK, Living Lab homes already have room-by-room heating control and sensors monitoring performance, so innovators can quickly access and analyse real-world data such as energy consumption, air temperatures, relative humidity and local weather.

About Lightsource Labs

Lightsource Labs is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lightsource bp, a global leader in the funding, development and management of large-scale solar projects. Lightsource bp is a 50:50 joint venture with bp, the oil and gas major, and currently operates over 2GW of solar assets worldwide.

Lightsource Labs was founded in 2016 to take advantage of Lightsource bp’s unique market position and help accelerate the transition to a sustainable, decentralised, digitalised energy system. Through the acquisition of Internet of Energy specialist ubiworx™ in 2018, Lightsource Labs has positioned itself at the forefront of digital energy innovation. We have developed bespoke digital energy solutions for a range of commercial projects and partners around the world. We have experience delivering both turnkey digital energy solutions and specific technology components required to commercialise market-leading offerings.

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