Community Energy Literature Review

Regen held a one-day event in Exeter this month entitled Smart Energy Marketplace 2018 ( www.regen.co.uk ) There was an exhibition for organisations in renewable energy, and a series of twelve seminars, which addressed regional energy systems, the future of the gas network, the development of storage, democratic energy systems, local flexibility markets, the electric vehicle revolution, and the future of small scale electricity generation; the remaining five lectures were devoted to the work of Energiesprong.  The  Energiesprong  organisation originated in the Netherlands, and is concerned with energy efficiency in both whole house refurbishment and new build standards. It aims to deliver millions of zero energy homes by 2050, and its methods have attracted interest in the UK. Specific issues discussed in the seminars on Energiesprong related to funding, scale, the supply chain, health and well-being . The attention paid to this topic may indicate a realization ...

Some preliminary results are available from the  Household-Supplier Energy Market (HoSEM) project , mentioned in earlier posts, and are described in  “Goal-based automation of peer-to-peer electricity trading”. A broad view of the underlying technology is offered in “Review of Blockchain Technology and its Expectations: Case of the Energy Sector” Both papers can be accessed at https://www.researchgate.net/project/P2P-Energy-Trading-for-Renewables The HoSEM project is now the subject of a discussion group on the Community Energy England Hub website, at http://hub.communityenergyengland.org/projects/136/

Opportunities for  large-scale renewable energy projects  were discussed at  a recent meeting of a community energy network in the West of England.  An example would be  the buying back into community ownership of a commercial solar farm. This is potentially attractive in the current UK situation where projects suitable for individual CE groups are now hard to find. A large-scale project would, however, exceed the financial means and possibly the expertise of such groups, making a consortium necessary. The legal structure of such a consortium might have to be different from that of any existing CE group, and its activity might also challenge the present concept of local energy. A new kind of business model could be required, making the literature on this subject relevant. A starting point is the  article Business model innovation in electricity supply markets: The role of complex value in the United Kingdom Stephen Hall, Katy Roelich, Energy Polic...

'Refactoring Energy Systems' is a research fellowship related to the HoSEM project described in an earlier post. Its grant application details can be viewed at http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/R007373/1 In brief, the fellowship aims to transform how the energy system is viewed, managed and evolved: moving away from the current perception of a single, uniform system across the whole of the UK, to that of localised, adaptive, largely self-reliant system-of-systems. In this new setting, the local systems will each be individually optimised, yet globally connected. To enable this locally optimised and globally connected energy system, the fellowship will deliver a set of system refactoring patterns, tools, and techniques. Refactoring is a disciplined approach to gradually changing the internal structure of an existing system without changing its externally useful services.  The project runs from 2017 to 2022.