Energy storage units repel power blackouts

16th October 2014

Mick Elliott

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Moixa Technology has partnered with Internet of Things (IoT) specialist 1248 to deploy innovative MASLOW energy storage systems across 300 UK homes and offices in London, East Anglia and South West along with student accommodation at Brunel University. The patented MASLOW technology stores energy from solar panels during the day and low-tariff electricity supplies in the night to reduce peak energy use and keep vital lighting and computing devices working during power cuts.

The pilot is the largest UK deployment of residential electricity storage at the edge of the grid and is part of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) Energy Storage Demonstration Programme. MASLOW addresses growing concerns about energy security, including potential risks to gas supplies for electricity generation, storm and flood outages and falling UK energy capacity margins.

“The system leverages Internet of Things technologies to aggregate distributed energy ’storage as a service’, enabling the system to deliver megawatt scale balancing across the local network and overall grid,” explained Moixa’s CTO Chris Wright . “This also improves PV (photovoltaic) storage economics, better levers renewables and reduces wind curtailment.”

Moixa has deployed MASLOW systems in 16 flats at Brunel University, currently powered by 32KWh of energy storage co-installed with DC (Direct Current) Surelight LED Lighting, ensuring reduced peak demand, resilient lighting and electronics powered via innovative high-power USB sockets. The system is already saving around 4.5MWh (2.5 Tonnes of CO2) per month.

It is using 1248’s Geras streaming analytics service to reliably monitor, collect, store and analyse many channels of real-time data from each MASLOW system deployed in the field – already generating a stream of more than 15,000,000 datapoints per day.

“We needed a new type of database optimised for the IoT and capable of low-level aggregation, offloading much of the stress of data reduction and making our applications easier to build and more responsive to users,” said Moixa’s Wright. “Geras provides performance, scalability and value for money with a good level of standards support for its software application programming interface (API). And since 1248 offers an infrastructure-as-a-service cost model, it can also scale-up alongside our new business model without us having to invest up-front.”

“Collaboration between 1248 and Moixa is harnessing the power of the IoT to make better use of urban renewables and provides an excellent showcase of UK IoT technology,” said Keith Reed, Head of Sales at 1248. “The rapidly changing world of energy is throwing up new challenges that require a secure, reliable, scalable, standards-based infrastructure to handle data storage and live aggregation and Geras fits the bill.”