Oil industry wants to conduct a big power test in your house
Big Oil wants to put a box in your hall closet that works like a human brain, can cut the lights, stop the refrigerator and will know how you move about in the privacy of your home better than you do.
Sounds worrying? It’s one of the ideas the world’s largest oil companies are experimenting with to survive in a low-carbon world.
Companies such as Lightsource BP, in which British oil major BP holds a stake, are running trials of smart systems in homes that will do everything from generating solar power, storing it and managing consumption.
Much like Spotify Technology gives users instant access to thousands of playlists without them having to spend years building their own collection, Lightsource wants to make sophisticated renewable power systems available to average people.
It is figuring out how to go big on electricity as demand surges with rising prosperity around the world while investors and activists it them under immense pressure to adopt green policies. However, concerns over climate mean the power industry of the future will be nothing like the past as the focus shifts to efficiency and carbon-free electricity.
Todd Hill, an electrical engineer, lives in a fourbedroom house in a hilly town south of London with his wife and two daughters, representing what Lightsource thinks is possible.
After he moved into a new home in 2013, he installed 23 photovoltaic panels on the roof capable of generating 5.3 kilowatts of power, about enough for his family. Lightsource added a battery to store the electricity that the panels generate, an inverter that can be programmed to dispatch the stored electrons when needed, and a diverter to send surplus power to the water heater.
Hill controls this kit, which he estimates cost about $13,000, with an app that gives real-time information. He could be camel-riding in Mongolia, and the technology will still know the best time to generate power in his home and charge the battery. At night, when the solar panels are effectively useless, the battery can juice up his electric car.
“The main aim is to use everything we generate within the home,” Hill said. “So anything that goes from the PV to the grid is a wasted opportunity that we can save money on.”
For anyone with less interest in tinkering with their day-to-day power use, Lightsource is offering to take control. The company specializes in efficiently generating electricity so the home’s resident doesn’t produce any surplus that can only be sold to the grid at discounted prices. And it ensures they don’t end up buying more expensive power generated by fossil fuels.
When the customer moves around the house, the artificial intelligence box learns patterns, such as when a person works from home or is on vacation, with the purpose of closely matching electricity generation with inhouse consumption. It can do things such as predict the next day’s weather, detect individual appliances, collect data on how often and at what times they are used, and help produce a greater share of the power at home.
Hill is one of 200 people who tested a smart energy management system for Electricity de France’s local unit and Lightsourc, in whose lab he works.
Most utilities potentially have a problem on their hands as more people generate their own electricity. In the U.K. about 27 percent of power is now produced outside of the big and hulking power stations of the past, according to National Grid data. That could jump to 46 percent by 2030.
A spokesman for EDF’s unit EDF Energy said it aims to provide a range of “energy services” to customers. Its trial with Lightsource ended last year, but it’s running other experiments, such as offering discounted batteries to homeowners with solar panels.
“Once you get the customer on your side, it’s like an Apple ecosystem; those companies will make it really hard to switch providers,” said Elchin Mammadov, a utilities analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It’s trying to make this offering more sticky, and then you can upsell other services.”
A profitable business for the companies could be managing the power grid itself.
A network of homes and businesses with solar panels and batteries could potentially replace some of the giant power stations in the future. Companies with access to these homes could help balance supply and demand for a fee.
“There’s going to be more and more electricity demand,” said Kareen Boutonnat, Lightsource’s chief operating officer. “You can manage that by effectively putting in a lot more generation and having generation on reserve and spending billions on having to upgrade the grid, or you can do that by having this type of smart system.”