Flexitricity, which claims to have set up and now runs the ‘first, largest and most advanced’ says many businesses are sitting on untapped sources of revenue in their on-site generation and electricity consuming equipment.

Its customers are paid a ‘rent’ for the assets they have connected and a usage payment its smart grid receives a signal from National Grid, such as during demand peaks or when large power stations fail.

It has already had success with the exhibition centre the EL in London, which has two standby diesel generators with 6MW of electrical generation.

When the centre’s not using the system Flexitricity’s takes them over generating, what it claims are ‘six-figure annual revenues’ for the ExCel.

Flexitricity founder Dr Alastair Martin said: “The aggregation of demand response and distributed generation is essential to the development of a gigawatt-scale smart grid infrastructure to accommodate for the UK’s increasing reliance upon renewables.

“To respond to intermittent electricity supply and spikes in national demand our servers securely connect to multiple Flexitricity outstations which in turn are connected and configured to ‘talk’ with our customer’s energy assets.

“This dialogue enables us to monitor the state of equipment anywhere in the UK and turn down consumption or turn on generation for short periods when Grid needs our support.”

A guide to smart grids was launched at the Energy Event at Birmingham’s NEC this week.

Luke Walsh

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