Energy Systems Catapult adds smart EV charging to Living Lab

Energy Systems Catapult is adding smart electric vehicle (EV) charging capabilities to its Living Lab of real-world smart homes.

Cloud-based smart charging software developed by ev.energy will be incorporated into its new digital integration platform allowing suppliers, aggregators and home technology providers to trial new products and services in the 200 connected homes that now make up the lab and enabling networks to gain a better understanding of the impact on the power grid.

Energy Systems Catapult will also build a dataset of EV charging patterns to add to its existing datasets for domestic heating and energy consumption.

Living Lab business lead Rebecca Sweeney said: “Integration of the ev.energy platform is another step towards making the Living Lab the UK’s premier whole systems test and demonstration environment for the home energy market.

“A range of innovators can now rapidly test and launch to market a flexible offering that could include electricity, heating and transport.

“Equally the Living Lab can act as a facility to conduct network flexibility trials where devices are controlled to manage demand pressures on electricity networks.”

An application programming interface feed from ev.energy’s software will provide the Living Lab with energy consumption data and the ability to control EV charging though price signals. This could include delaying charging during periods of peak demand when the wholesale price of electricity and the carbon intensity of the power grid is higher.

Nick Woolley, chief executive of ev.energy, said: “It’s great to be collaborating with the Living Lab. Our mission is to integrate electric vehicles into the energy system to support the decarbonisation of the energy system. The Living Lab is a great way of testing collaborations with other innovative partners.”