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Project name:

Solutions for P2P energy trading between buildings

Status: Idea
Creation date: 23-11-2022

Project objectives:

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

At this moment, buildings generating excess energy from renewables sometimes suffer from overproduction of energy and are not able to feed that energy back into the grid. This leads to a loss of energy, especially during seasons when the energy needed is much more volatile.

Buildings are looking to sell their energy directly to other consumers at a competitive tariff rate (with capped amount of energy in some cases) compared to energy from the grid. This, however, leads to a number of problems including:

  1. Current smart meter interfaces may not allow full control and may have less flexibility of electricity being sold (prosumer) and control intake of energy (consumer)
  2. The existing infrastructure for efficient and effective energy to be fed back to the grid is not readily available between buildings
  3. Incentive systems are not in place to enable for continuous feeding back into the grid

We have not tried solutions to solve this problem before and are open to consider different novel solutions. At the same time, Solarvest recognises this is a big problem to solve and part of the problem is the requirement to have a mature and reliable (smart) grid infrastructure. We therefore do not expect a full end-to-end solution, but are instead looking for solution providers that have smart solutions that can help us move into the direction of a fully developed P2P market.

Solarvest is not interested in the utilisation of storage systems or systems that emphasise on-grid reliance.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS / PERFORMANCE CRITERIA:

Solarvest will be evaluating the solution providers on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, we will be looking at the following requirements and criteria:

Technical requirements:

  • Designing an online monitoring system controlled by an AI/machine learning ecosystem to predict the usage of electricity on the consumer side and sell them accordingly.
  • To focus on microgrid development
  • The solution should store the history of energy usage (time-based) for consumers to allow the AI system to predict and sell to consumers based on their required needs.
  • Hardware (smart meter) shows how much energy is being imported and allows the consumer to request more/less energy or change/add on prosumer if required (live management of energy through meter)
  • In compliance, but not limited to, the following guidelines: IEC: 62052, IEC 62056 & IEC: 14908

Performance Criteria:

  • Target to reduce electricity prices generated by renewable energy (Example: solar) by 10% to 15%
  • To increase business/commercial use of clean energy up to 25%.

COST TARGET

Specific solutions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis based on the aforementioned technical and performance criteria. Generally speaking, below are some benchmark cost indicators:

To drive the OPEX/user down to below 5% or more of the energy bills cost, once the solution is scaled up to beyond 10,000 users.

TIMEFRAME FOR DEVELOPMENT

Phase 1: PoC or Pilot (2-4 months)

Phase 2: Further commercial roll-out to be discussed on a case-by-case basis

POTENTIAL MARKET / BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Estimated participants in the pilot deployment program should be up to 50, and can be commercially scaled up to 1000 users. It can be deployed across all energy users, with a market potential of millions.

RESOURCES

  1. A S$15,000 Pilot and deployment support for pilot project/showcase
  2. A S$20,000 showcase project once the product can fulfill the commercial requirement

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

For the solution providers, we would target SME's and start-ups with a track record in programming, AI and software. We expect a TRL level: 7 and/or above with a proposal of a solution that can be deployed at a global scale. In case novel foreground IP is created between Solarvest and the solution provider, IP ownership can be discussed on a case-by-case basis

 

Contact / source: Enterprise Singapore Sustainability Open Innovation Challenge - Sustainability Open Innovation Challenge 2022 (innovation-challenge.sg)

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