INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology
EDF Energy empowers
social housing residents to
trade solar energy
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Elmore House
R
esidents of a block of flats in Brixton are pioneering a
community energy trading project led by EDF Energy that will
enable them to trade solar energy with each other.
EDF Energy’s Research and Development department has launched
Project ‘CommUNITY’ with Repowering London and UCL’s Energy
Institute, which aims to increase residents’ consumption of local low-
carbon energy while reducing their overall costs.
Project ‘CommUNITY’ will enable Brixton residents at Elmore House
to access electricity generated from a solar PV system on the block’s
roof, store it in a battery and trade with one another (peer-to-peer)
using Blockchain technology.
The platform, managed via an app, allows residents in urban areas
to source their energy from local renewables and either use their
own allocation of energy or trade it with their neighbours. Under
current regulations, customers cannot buy from, or sell to, other
consumers but delivery of the project has been made possible as part
of Ofgem’s ‘Innovation Link’, which allows the consortium to work
outside the current regulatory framework.
www.intelligentcio.com
Xavier Mamo, Director of Research and Development at EDF Energy,
said: “At EDF Energy, we are committed to making energy easier for
our customers and unlocking the benefits that new technologies are
bringing to the sector.
“By collaborating with our partners and using Blockchain technology,
this project in Brixton aims to show how small communities in dense
urban areas could benefit from a low carbon and local energy system
in a new and transformative way.”
Felix Wight, Technical Director at Repowering, said: “We believe that
everyone should have the opportunity to own a stake in and benefit
from new energy technologies, and this project will create new ways
to do just that.”
“We are proud that the first inner city solar cooperative in the UK
will now host this ground-breaking trial which continues the journey
towards a locally managed, low carbon future.”
The trial is expected to start in March 2019 and will end in
October 2019. n
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