ACCESS (Assisting Communities to Connect to Electrical Sustainable Sources) is an innovative project which will enable the real time matching of local renewable electricity generation to local electricity demand in off-gas-grid properties in order to use renewable energy to heat homes efficiently and affordably.The aim is to link a new 400kW hydro plant to local electrical demand on the island of Mull (and neighbouring Iona).
They intend to provide 350kW of controllable, smart demand using the Quantum Smart Electric Thermal Storage System in homes with existing electric, oil or LPG central heating. The installation of the Quantum heaters started in December 2015 and is on going. Funded through the Scottish Government’s Local Energy Challenge Fund and Ofgem’s Network Innovation Allowance and valued at £2 million, the ACCESS Project aims to drive the development of financially viable grid connections for small scale generators in transmission constrained areas of the Scottish networks.
The ACCESS Project will be delivered by a multidisciplinary consortium made up of SSE, Community Energy Scotland, Element Energy, VCharge, and Mull and Iona Community Trust. It is one of six projects being trialled by the Local Energy Challenge Fund throughout Scotland.
NINES (Northern Isles New Energy Solutions ) aims to address some of the most pressing energy challenges in Shetland by using large and small scale energy storage solutions combined with an active network management (ANM) system to create a smart grid and allow small scale renewable generation to play a much more significant role in meeting the islands’ energy needs.
The NINES project is led by Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution (SHEPD), the owner and operator of the energy distribution network in Shetland, and has attracted £34m funding from Ofgem, DECC and Hjaltland Housing Association to install and trial new technologies. As part of wider plans for Shetland, NINES is scheduled to last from November 2011 to the end of December 2016.During the first phase of the project a necessary infrastructure is being implemented to enable active management of energy demand, generation and energy storage assets. This will help to achieve objectives of reducing energy demand and energy production by fossil fuels. The next phase of the project will see an upgrade or replacement of Lerwick Power Station depending on the lessons learned from the first phase. The NINES project consists various elements energy storage, including the installation of the Quantum Smart Electric Thermal Storage System in 230 homes for demand side management purposes.
The Green Way is a collaborative venture established in 2010 by industry, academic institutions and public/semi-state players in the Dublin region, whose vision is to create jobs and trade opportunities by activating and developing an internationally recognised cleantech cluster.The Green Way facilitated the pilot deployment of an end-to-end Glen Dimplex Quantum Smart Electric Thermal Storage System.
To fulfil space and water heating requirements and act as an aggregated demand side management tool on the national grid with the potential to enable the dispatch of large quantities of renewable electricity in Ireland which would otherwise be curtailed. In 2012 Glen Dimplex rolled out a major trial with The Green Way involving the installation of 360 space heaters, connected to a Glen Dimplex gateway and web portal, in 140 social housing homes managed by the Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council. The Green Way demonstration project was conducted in partnership with Eirgrid and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).
The project was independently verified and monitored by the Dublin Institute of Technology and demonstrated how public and private sectors can work together to solve energy and environmental challenges.
PowerShift Atlantic demonstrated one of the world’s first fully grid-integrated virtual power plants designed to allow for more effective integration of wind power, using load and wind forecasting and aggregation capabilities to perform near real-time load shifting and provide new ancillary services to the grid.PowerShift Atlantic (PSA), an international award-winning demonstration project, was partially funded by Natural Resources Canada’s Clean Energy Projects.
The research project kicked off in October of 2010 in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick Power Corporation (NBPC)led the collaborative consortium of other Maritime electrical utilities and an academic partner which included Maritime Electric Company Limited (MECL), Saint John Energy (SJE), Nova Scotia Power Incorporated (NSPI) and the University of New Brunswick (UNB).The objective of the demonstration research project was “to learn through doing” and determine if customer loads could be shifted (from a technical perspective), leveraging smart grid technologies to allow for more effective integration of renewable wind generation and to discover if this could be accomplished in a cost effective way. The Quantum Smart Electric Thermal Storage System was deployed in homes in a small portion of the NB Power residential research and was used for demand side management. Maritime commercial and residential customers participated in the demonstration project which ended in March 2015.