Location
Tavistock, Devon
Background
Tamar Energy Community is a Devon-based community energy group with 327 kW of solar PV on schools, businesses and the local swimming pool. The group is volunteer-led, and it runs a fuel poverty and domestic energy advice service.
What is the challenge?
Tamar Energy Community is interested to find out if local people are willing to change their electricity consumption patterns to times when electricity is being generated locally, or at times when the carbon emissions of the electricity from the grid are lower.
What is the proposed solution and how is OpenLV enabling it?
A web app is being developed to allow people to see how much electricity is provided by the grid to the local substation (using data provided by the OpenLV project), alongside information about carbon intensity, electricity costs and local solar PV generation data.
The plan is to use this information to raise awareness about local energy use and the higher carbon emissions associated with electricity generation at times of peak demand. Information from the web app will be displayed on a screen in the local primary school for the children to see – and possibly also on a screen in the local Post Office.
It is hoped that this will encourage consumers to think about reducing demand at particular times. The project wants to learn more about whether people would react positively as ‘good citizens’ and use non-essential electrical items at off-peak times voluntarily, or whether a financial incentive is likely to be required.
In addition, Tamar Energy Community will use data from the OpenLV project to investigate the development of local tariff models, and whether measures such as this can be used to help local Distribution Network Operators defer upgrading substations, potentially resulting in significant cost savings.
