Balancing act: how RLtec is making smart grid technology a reality

Q. You’ve just announced the rollout of the first trial of RLtec’s smart grid technology on household appliances within UK homes. The trial involves 300 Indesit fridge freezers in homes of npower customers. How significant is the trial and what does it mean in terms of when this technology – which reduces carbon emissions from electricity generation – will be rolled out across UK homes?

A. It is the biggest trial of its kind in Europe and it is the first Demonstration Action to be approved by Ofgem under the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) legislation [which requires electricity and gas suppliers to achieve energy savings by assisting their customers to take energy-efficiency measures in their homes]. Under the legislation we have to undertake demonstrations with the new object to quantify carbon savings. To that end we are deploying smart appliances, where the technology is allowing the appliance to respond to grid frequency changes while maintaining safe food storage. It means we can monitor the parameters within the refrigeration.

The 300 fridges are phase one of the demonstration and there will up to 2700 fridge freezers in phase two, which we are planning probably in the second half of 2010.

The objective is to complete the demonstration by March 2011, which is when the current phase of CERT runs to.

The product we are putting into people’s homes is an Indesit PBAA 34 NF D. Indesit manufactures it and the product is fully CE-approved – meaning it has passed all the appropriate quality assurance tests. But one of the issues we face [in terms of when it will be rolled out across the UK] is that the CERT legislation doesn't provide for clarity beyond 2012. This is something we are applying to Government for more clarity on.

Q. What is your technology and how does it work?

A. Our technology is called dynamic demand and one way of considering it is as an energy storage technology. If we look at appliances, such as fridges, they store energy. Hot water stores energy, but lighting doesn’t store energy.

There are many electrical loads that have stored energy and by targeting their load controller we can effectively turn them into a ‘grid battery’, but without the downside of any losses to the battery.

Dynamic demand has the potential to create a ‘virtual power station.’ It displaces a coal-fired plant that is traditionally used to balance the grid, reducing carbon emissions and costs, while maintaining grid efficiency.

If applied widely in the UK, dynamic demand could eliminate the need for one 750-megawatt power station, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two million tonnes a year.

Q. A lot of people will find it difficult to understand how technology such as this doesn’t reduce the performance of appliances it is used on – can you explain how this is?

A. Appliances fitted with our dynamic demand technology automatically modify their power consumption in response to second-by-second changes in the balance between supply and demand on the grid. It’s effectively a silent solution as it doesn’t affect appliance performance in any way and no action is needed on the part of the consumer.

Q. What kind of products can it be used with and can it be used in the commercial sector?

A. Industrial and commercial users are using it– Sainsbury’s is one of them. It is using it with its refrigeration.

Meanwhile, we have a Carbon Trust research grant to trial the technology on air conditioning and air handling equipment for data centres.

We are exploring many other ways of using it as well at the moment.

Q. You can’t be the only company developing this kind of software. What makes yours unique and where is your main competition going to be coming from?

A. I am not aware of any other company that has system like ours. It is unique because it is ‘bidirectional’ – by that I mean it can both increase and decrease the consumption proportionally with the frequency of the excursion, which is how a generation plant works. If you take a large generation plant it will operate partially loaded and it can increase or decrease its output.

So this is a great piece of UK technology creating jobs and revenue for UK PLC.

Q. How many green jobs does your company plan to create?

A. Our business plan calls for staff size of 75 within five years time, but we will be creating many indirect jobs too.

Q. There has been much talk about the great advantages smart grid will bring us, but what actually does it mean and how far away from it are we?

A. Smart grid is about improving the way we consume and generate electricity primarily to enable generation and security of supply and to decarbonise.

In the US, President Obama is investing $33.4 billion in a smart grid project and in the UK, our Government has £6 billion budget for smart grid.

Q. You have just received a significant investment – £5.8 million from a combination of Low Carbon Accelerator, Naxos Capital Partners and Carbon Trust Investment Partners. What does this investment mean to you?

A. It allows us to fund the UK initial rollout and the deployment of a grid-scale service.

The goal is to demonstrate the revenue model for the business by contracting with the National Grid for the energy balancing service. Obviously we will no doubt need more money.

In terms of new markets, the US obviously looks like an attractive territory. I have experience of licensing metering technology over there and we currently reviewing all options on how best to tackle the US market.

Q. You have just received this investment, but how difficult has it been for a company like yours to get investment over the last year or so?

A. It is fair to say, in an environment where banks are finding it hard to find money, even the cleantech sector has found it incredibly hard to find money. But we have found Business Secretary Peter Mandelson incredibly helpful by making funds available from Government.

The Carbon Trust has been fantastic in its support and clearly smart grid is an area it wishes to invest in and its endorsement and confidence in the management team is very useful.

Q. What more would you like to see the Government do to help businesses such as yours?

A. We need more certainty on the CERT legislation, which comes to an end in 2012. The Government has been consulting on it, but for investment we need to a clear statement of intent. 

Related Content:
Green and Environmental Interviews

Related Links:
www.rltec.com