OpenLV project selects businesses and communities for trials

Business and community competition winners have been selected as part of a ground breaking trial that will provide access to open data on local electricity networks. The winning innovation ideas could have a real impact on the future of local networks while providing benefits to a wide range of users.

The OpenLV project selected 17 applications from the business and academic arena as well as 7 successful applications from community organisations. All 24 projects will now progress to the next stage, in most cases developing apps to access data from the networks.


A customer metering installation at an OpenLV trial project site.

OpenLV, a Network Innovation Competition project led by Western Power Distribution and EA Technology, is opening up live data from local electricity networks for the first time.
 

Examples of community projects that have been successful in being approved for OpenLV trials include apps that will:

• Enable home owners to use energy generation and storage in the most effective way
• Provide a visual representation of substation demand and local generation in order to inform the development of local tariffs
• Show energy demand across a village, to help balancing of local generation, storage and demand
• Help optimise the match between photovoltaics (PV) and heat pump installations, so that local households flex their demand to minimise losses in the low voltage network
• Let households know when there is high demand at the local substation, to help build the case for local business models
• Create a public approach to reducing peak demand on substations, to lower carbon emissions, and ultimately help tackle fuel poverty
• Raise awareness of energy usage in a tower block and demonstrate how residents can save money on bills by shifting demand from peak times.

Some examples of business and academic projects that are due to access data through OpenLV are as follows:

• Studying the effects that localised renewables-based generation and consumption would have on local energy services
• Investigating how future energy technology in homes could help alleviate low voltage network grid constraints and allow the roll-out of low carbon technologies without the need for costly reinforcement
• Feeding LV network data into a prototype energy project identification platform that identifies solar energy and ground source heat pump potential as well as building performance
• Utilising LV network data and a dedicated OpenLV platform to implement managed EV charging
• Bringing LV network data and existing academic research into the construction of a dynamic pricing model based on current grid demand integrated with an energy trading platform
• Developing a software application that allows electrical appliances to be automatically managed according to smart grid requirements.

Mark Dale, Innovation Project Manager at Western Power Distribution, comments: “Having greater visibility of local network power flows will give Network Operators the confidence to accept greater numbers of Low Carbon Technologies such as Electric Vehicle charge points and Distributed Generation. OpenLV, with the LV-CAP™ platform, will open up information about the capacity of local networks and create this visibility for WPD as well as for the successful participants.”

Richard Potter, EA Technology’s OpenLV Project Manager, adds: “When we opened the competition for businesses and communities to submit ideas for using open, live electricity data, we didn’t know what response to expect, so I’m delighted that we’ve had so many applications, and so many good ideas to progress to the trial stage.

“Ultimately, the technology being trialled by OpenLV is expected to be adopted in substations throughout Britain, providing useful data to a wide range of sectors including electric vehicle charging companies, renewable energy developers, property developers, facilities managers, smart city planners, operators of private energy networks, the electricity industry itself, and of course local communities.”

Find out more at www.openlv.net. To watch a short video that explains the OpenLV project visit: www.openlv.net/resources