Expanding horizons for Living Lab: from heat to whole system innovation incubator

The remit and capabilities of the Energy Systems Catapult's Living Lab have grown following a hook up with the Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC) in May. Rebecca Sweeney, business lead for the Living Lab, outlines the project and its aspirations.

The Living Lab was set up within Energy Systems Catapult around 2015, under the Smart Systems and Heat programme, to try to understand consumer needs and behaviours around energy use.

We initially focused on heat in the home, working with innovators to test out heat-related products and services. At the heart of the Living Lab was a research tool, which allowed us to control temperature in different rooms.

As part of this, we also developed the concept of “heat as a service” – where consumers trialled paying for warmth by the hour instead of using kilowatt hours – we called these “warm hours”. We found this was much easier for consumers to understand, and by using data from their own homes we helped them understand cost of different heating outcomes in their home.

Over the last 18 months we’ve upgraded and expanded the Living Lab to make it a truly national asset, a real-world test environment for UK innovators to trial new energy products, services and business models, with the aim of de-risking and scaling innovations for market.

As well as heat-focused innovations, we’ve incorporated smart EV charging and the ability to trial a range of flexibility products and services. We have worked with an SME called SysMech to create a digital integration platform to provide interoperability between technologies, meaning innovators can connect to commercial off-the-shelf technology.

We’ve grown the Lab to around 500 homes UK-wide. New households can join wherever they are – it takes just a few minutes on our portal. Simply providing us with some information about their home and we are then able to give them the opportunity to join new trials becoming the among the first people in the UK to test a new innovation, technology or service that is at the cutting-edge of helping to solve the climate challenge.

Concurrent testing

With a huge focus on climate change in the media right now, and consumers wanting to be able to do their part in tackling it, the Living Lab is a great way for people to get involved and help design the low carbon energy system of the future.

The Lab currently has a partnership with smart heating control company Tado on zonal heating control and we will connect to further heating controllers in time. We can also connect to commercial off-the-shelf devices, such as SmartThings sensors.

Currently we’re recruiting homes wanting to test out a new air quality system developed by Scottish innovators – arbnco. We’re also working with EV Energy on managed charging trials for EVs, and with the AMP X digital energy assistant, which is enabling flexibility provision within homes.

Our latest partnership is with Lightsource Labs, who are working with us to integrate their smart energy management system into the Living Lab that will enable energy storage innovation trials.

The new collaboration between Living Lab and the Power Networks Demonstration Centre is a step towards creating a Whole Energy Systems Accelerator (WESA).

Connecting these two facilities and their combined simulation capability will – for the first time – enable the interactions between activity in homes, energy networks and market structures to be tested in real-time in a range of controlled scenarios.

This will allow the physics, human behaviour, smart technology, energy networks, and market innovations to be tested concurrently and rapidly to create a robust and integrated physical and market environment fit for net zero; a real-world example of taking a systems approach to decarbonisation.

A new energy system network and storage infrastructure

The PNDC is a research facility in Cumbernauld, Scotland, built with academic, government and industry support, that researches, tests and accelerates energy system innovations.

Historically, the PNDC has carried out sophisticated testing of novel network, working with innovators to stress test them – it was predominantly focused on electricity, but it is now building out in other sectors as well.

We have plans developed to build on the WESA collaboration, both in terms of scale and in the networks and technologies supported. In time, WESA will see a new energy system network and storage infrastructure established at PNDC, with investment in behind-the-meter heating, charging and storage technologies in Living Lab homes close by.

This will support whole systems testing and analysis of novel market arrangements, and allow us to test these out in a variety of scenarios, to ensure they are fit for purpose.

But even the current collaboration already allows us to connect homes’ real time energy usage to the PNDC network. We can select a number of Living Lab homes across the UK, then send their energy demand data to Scotland where it is played out on the PNDC’s load bank, an electronic device that mimics demand on the network. For all intents and purposes, those homes exist on the same bit of network.

The PNDC can look at different network configurations, testing out what might happen in the future, with a higher penetration of EVs or heat pumps on the same section of network. We can understand the stresses on the network, what protections may be needed, and how consumers might respond to requests to turn usage up or down. We’re aiming to run the first trials under the PNDC collaboration later this year.

We can explore different propositions and use cases for consumers around low carbon tech in their home, and whether flexible energy consumption in homes, or localized storage might minimize network reinforcement. For instance, does it make sense to have energy storage behind the meter close to home, or storage in the wider network?

A place to test emerging standards

As we move to the electrification of heat and transport, there will be a much bigger demand on the network. The PNDC collaboration and the creation of WESA will help us explore what flexibility there may be within homes in terms of the time of their energy usage, and consumers’ preferences around managed charging propositions. For instance, energy services where tech is bundled in with the electricity supply, or EVs are bundled with a number of miles. It allows us to understand that interplay between consumers in their homes and the network impact.

Under the collaboration with the PNDC, we’re speaking to a number of people about potential trials: innovators would find it valuable to test within the facility, and we are very keen on accelerating new products and services. We’ve spent a lot of time exploring use cases, with innovators big and small, and also with Ofgem and the BEIS policy team.

This has helped us better understand – what are the use cases of interest? What is the priority? This has helped direct our development priorities.

Digital interoperability of technology in homes and on the network is a really important enabler of a low carbon energy systems, so this is a focus area too. There’s a risk, as we move to a more digitalized energy system, that you get ‘walled gardens’, or the biggest players fixing how they want things to be, and others being forced to have commercial arrangements with them. Having interoperability, with open standards for connectivity, is obviously better for consumers, and that’s another area of our work.

Recently, a couple of voluntary PAS standards on smart tech for demand side response have been published. Energy Systems Catapult was part of the group that provided insight into their development. We’re interested in seeing how they could be enabled, and what – if any – modifications are needed to make them more usable for innovators in this space.

But ultimately, we want to get to open, international standards that people can design products to, and we see the Living Lab as a way of enabling that interconnection in the first place, but also a place to test out those emerging standards.