So Energy offers ‘first of a kind’ solar and battery storage service to customers

Several energy companies have made announcements this week suggesting that households and commercial landlords could benefit from the way they generate, store and use renewable energy in their properties.

Energy supplier So Energy offers its customers a “one-of-a-kind” solar power and battery storage system, supported by an online service, which offers an instant quote on the money and CO2 savings they can achieve through the service.

The system allows So Energy to remotely control consumers’ batteries to optimize their usage by using data on projected home energy consumption, weather forecasts and wholesale prices, and the network’s carbon intensity and capacity, the company said.

It can then decide when to draw energy from the house battery, when to charge the battery and when to sell electricity back into the grid in order to achieve the most competitive energy price for its customers. The company claims consumers can save up to 70 percent on energy bills by using the system.

“As the primary interface between energy consumers and the energy system, suppliers have a responsibility to do everything in their power to encourage environmentally friendly choices from their customers,” said Simon Oscroft, co-founder of So Energy. “And it’s our job to make these decisions as easy and engaging as possible.”

The announcement came when Ofgem separately approved a program launched by Emergent Energy that the supplier claims could reduce the cost of providing net-zero technology to the housing industry by 25 percent.

Emergent has developed an “intelligent local energy system solution” that connects individual houses and apartments with on-site net-zero technologies in residential areas via a microgrid, it announced yesterday.

Such microgrids are operated by Emergent, which rents renewable technologies from housing companies – including heat pumps, solar PV and chargers for electric vehicles – to supply local residents with green electricity and heat, the company said. Housing companies that are eligible for the offer include property developers, builders, landlords and social housing providers.

“The ban on gas boilers for all new houses from 2025 and the requirement that all social housing and rental apartments must be EPC C certified by 2030 will force the housing industry to spend hundreds of billions to drastically reduce emissions from their housing developments” said Reg Platt, founder and CEO of Emergent. “Our integrated model offers housing companies a return on investment and shares the benefits of technology with households that otherwise could not afford it.”

The “sandbox” program allows the start-up to test innovations without risking criticism from Ofgem and provides innovators with a range of tools for eligible suppliers, generators and network companies, the company said.

Elsewhere, SP Energy Networks announced this week that it has developed a new tool aimed at accelerating the net zero transition for heating UK homes. The tool, called “Heat-up”, enables utilities to use data from households to predict future needs for low-carbon forms of heating and then estimate the size of the heat pumps needed to heat those homes, the network operator said.

SP Energy, which has invested £ 129,000 in the heat-up tool, said it would also help governments and local authorities better understand the scale of the investments needed to meet the ambitious heat decarbonization targets, including the installation of up to 600,000 heat pumps per year in the UK by 2028.

Scott Mathieson, director of grid planning and regulation at SP Energy Networks, said the lessons learned from this project “will enable more people to switch to low-carbon heating, which will help the environment and ultimately allow us to serve our customers more efficiently to offer and accelerate the reduction costs”.