Energy’s the game in the Living Lab
The Living Lab, backed by the UK government’s council for science and technology, is a network of homes upgraded with smart home technology which provide real-time insights into how energy innovations are used by consumers. Sean Carroll finds out more.
The UK innovation agency Energy Systems Catapult has relaunched its Living Lab, a real-world test environment for innovators to trial new energy products and services.
The Living Lab is a network of connected smart homes that monitors consumer energy usage and behaviour, sends in-depth information back to a central database to give the Catapult team insights into how smart technologies are performing , and ultimately how this helps reduce carbon emissions.
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The Living Lab features approximately 200 households across the UK that volunteered their energy usage and patterns to be data points for smart home technology. The team monitoring the usage of these houses can then glean information, helping the UK businesses running trials to verify and improve the performance of low carbon products and services and, in the very near future, understand their impact on a mock electrical grid in tandem with Strathclyde University.
But more on that later.
Marc Brown is the Living Lab commercial lead and as he says the project evolved out of a desire to answer the question of how governments and businesses can cut down on emissions.
“In 2013, when the first version of the test environment was born, government was sort of scratching their heads as to how we could decarbonise domestic homes in the UK,” he explains.
“We’ve got 26 million gas boilers in homes contributing around 15% of the UK’s total carbon emissions
Smart systems in the energy sector were only just emerging at the time, but they quickly realised this may provide a big part of the answer.”
Seven years down the track and a couple of iterations later, the Living Lab integrates smart controls for heating and hot water. Now using mainstream tado° smart heating controls, users can choose exactly what temperatures they what in which rooms at what times using wireless radiator thermostats and even remotely decide when to warm up their water, not wasting energy when they wouldn’t be home to use it.
Other technology soon to be tested by innovative UK companies in the Living Lab includes devices that offer flexibility behind the meter to optimise the value of rooftop solar power and charge electric cars when the cost and carbon intensity of electricity is lowest.
Data that gets sent back lets smart home integrators understand how their technology is being used, gain qualitative data on how people feel about the systems and if it lives up to its specifications.
“And so, if you’ve just created this really funky smart home technology and it does X, Y, Z, we can ask people in the Living Lab homes if they want to trial it,” Marc says.
“Let’s say the integrator installs it in 30 homes, we can monitor the data that’s coming out of that home to see technically how did it perform? Did it save them money on their energy bills? And is it more efficient for the wider energy system?”
He adds that the other cool thing about having these Living Labs so accessible is that they can talk to the homeowners or tenants and further understand what they liked, what they didn’t and so on.
What were the finer details about the solution that need tweaking?
The Living Lab has also integrated Samsung SmartThings which will make it easier for users to control third‐party technology, opening the window for more companies to pitch their solutions. But it’s more than just product testing. The Living Lab has partnered with Strathclyde University which has a lab of its own that focuses on the electricity grid.
The university has simulated an electricity network in its lab and when it has access to the Living Lab data and electricity usage, it can make an approximation of the impact the smart tech has on the grid, helping government planners work towards a realistic expectation of power consumption in the home at different times of the day, week or year. This will highlight where pinch points in the system may need upgrading, or better yet, where the integration of smart technologies can provide flexibility without the need for costly grid upgrades.
“What we’re really interested in doing is, for example, understanding if you were to put in electric vehicle chargers, electric heating and storage into a number of Living Lab homes, how it affects an electrical grid,” Marc explains.
“By replicating a piece of the power grid in Strathclyde University’s network lab and using the data from the Living Lab homes, you could understand the impact on the network.
“Theoretically the simulated network in Strathclyde University’s lab could then send a signal to those Living Lab homes testing a technology that provides flexibility services and the home switches over for 30 minutes to power itself from the battery in your electric vehicle plugged in on the driveway rather than the electricity network.”
Marc adds that the Living Lab team is working with the UK government to see how it might be able to scale up and has “very ambitious plans over the next 12 months”.
The Living Lab is open to trialling new products and services, and Marc says that the team is more than happy to use the Lab as a way for international companies to enter the UK market.
Please note: this article was written in early 2021 and it mentions that the Living Lab has 200 participating households. As of February 2022, the Living Lab now has 500 houses involved.
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