Energy Systems Catapult is offering expertise in Consumer Insight and domestic energy services, scoping the competitor landscape and assessing partnering opportunities.
The Challenge
Managing increasing electricity demand, driven by decarbonisation of transport and heat is critical challenge facing the transformation of the energy system.
Accessing flexibility behind the meter using digital services and platforms are critical to unlocking value from decentralised assets – such as solar and batteries – to enable more efficient operation of the whole energy system at least cost by minimising peak demand by shifting loads away from peak periods.
The Innovation
Manchester-based Evergreen Smart Power are an innovative Virtual Power Plant (VPP) business, aggregating and controlling domestic energy loads resulting from the decarbonisation of transport and heating to suit specific customer, market, generation and grid conditions.
Evergreen’s solution for electric vehicles (EVs) can respond to grid conditions, to spread charging over off-peak hours, reducing the 7kW load of chargers that would otherwise put strain on the network at peak times, while ensuring that EVs are sufficiently charged when needed. The solution also optimises other loads, such as heat pumps and electric heaters.
Evergreen’s Smart Power solution enables:
- Consumers to gain maximum benefit from energy generation, storage and consumption;
- Access the flexibility around domestic loads to address the challenges faced by the industry for the mutual benefit of energy stakeholders, domestic users and society.
However, VPPs are complex, cutting across systems integration, energy trading and consumer engagement models, as well as the need to work with District Network Operators and EV manufacturers. So to overcome resource limitations and explore wider opportunities in the market, Evergreen needed additional expertise.
The Solution
Energy Systems Catapult is home to the Energy Launchpad, which provides carefully selected innovators with tailored business incubation and acceleration support to help address barriers to growth, de-risk innovation, scale-up the business and secure investment.
Selected as part in the first intake of the Energy Launchpad, Evergreen Smart Power was able to access value-added expertise and skills in which many start-up business struggle for resource.