ENERGY AND CARBON REDUCTION
to capture multiple lucrative market opportunities – pooling together multiple assets from multiple customers into a single ‘virtual portfolio’. The supply optimisation platform automates energy trading, and deploys flexibility in real-time, opening up access to the complete range of market opportunities – from month ahead through to real-time, including demand side response, wholesale markets, and grid-balancing opportunities.
Trading is fully automated via the AI algorithms, but all decisions are tracked and monitored by a dynamic 24-hour trading team. This ensures that the flexible load is managed within agreed operating boundaries, securely monetising flexibility without affecting critical loads or causing any disruption.
Money saved and income generated Healthcare estates managers can therefore ensure that power is consumed or generated based on operational requirements, optimal market prices, and lower overall energy costs – enabling them to save money, generate income, reduce carbon emissions ,and secure energy resilience.
Our supply optimisation platform is capable of aggregating different types of energy assets from hundreds of sites across hundreds of miles into one smart pool – to create a decentralised microgrid. This portfolio combines battery storage with a mixture of other flexible assets, such as solar, CHP, generators, and large loads. Although the ISO 27001-certified software is cloud-based, it also includes a local computer deck, which provides a key safeguard. Even if communication drops, this controller continues and can override the cloud, thus ensuring that critical loads are never impacted.
Preparing for energy optimisation It is necessary to gain deep insights into how, when, and where energy is used on site to understand flexibility opportunities. This often starts with a detailed site audit to assess energy assets and energy-dependent processes. The next stage is to use advanced energy intelligence software to gather granular level energy insights. This process uses smart sensors to provide full visibility of energy usage across single or multiple sites – right down to individual equipment level. Hundreds of sensors can be installed within a few hours, and won’t cause disruption to operations. The insights can be interrogated via a ‘virtual dashboard’. Our recent research report, Distributed Energy Trends,2
found
that almost two-thirds of healthcare providers intend to make future use of smart sensors to inform their energy strategy. This data gathering process will uncover hidden opportunities to improve efficiency and identify flexibility and value in existing hospital processes and generation/storage assets. It will also highlight opportunities to make further improvements or use additional technologies. Estates engineers can then use this data to highlight flexibility opportunities and inform decision making.
Conclusion
It is time for healthcare facilities to take the next step in optimising the full value of their generation and storage assets. Innovative new digital technologies mean that estates managers can seamlessly exploit their surplus power, without any risk or disruption to patient services. This provides a new opportunity to reduce energy costs, improve sustainability, and increase resilience. hej
Tony Orton and Centrica Business Solutions
Tony Orton is the head of Business Development for the Healthcare Sector at Centrica Business Solutions. He joined the company in 2015, and has over 15 years’ experience in helping hospitals and NHS Trusts develop and install distributed energy systems.
Centrica Business Solutions operates across the UK and Ireland, Europe, and North America, and is at the forefront of the distributed energy market. It said: “With price predictability a thing of the past, increasing volatility of supply, and new energy technologies emerging, we provide energy expertise to help customers become economically and environmentally sustainable.” Through acquisitions of ‘market- leading energy specialists’, ENER-G, Panoramic Power, REstore, Vista Solar, CES Energy, and SmartWatt, Centrica Business Solutions says it ‘provides the innovative thinking, as well as the energy insights, optimisation, and on-site generation solutions, that organisations need to achieve their goals’.
References 1 Reducing energy costs and driving growth. Using energy optimisation to power your sustainable growth. Centrica Business Services, 2019. [https://www.centricabusinesssolutions .com/energy-optimisation-LP]/
Centrica Business Solutions says that ‘with a growth in battery storage and new digitised energy management solutions, hospitals can monetise their energy estate’.
70 Health Estate Journal August 2020
2 Distributed energy future trends. The insights behind sustainable business growth. [https://www.
centricabusinesssolutions.com/ distributed-energy-future-trends].
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