The federal government wish to discover the technical feasibility of controlling sensible units by the Information Communication Centre’s Sensible Meter System (DCC SMS), quite than at all times counting on everybody’s (usually ropey) dwelling broadband, in hopes of creating our power system smarter and higher. We’re certainly one of 5 corporations chosen to check this new system out.
Now, you might be pondering…controlling what, by the what, with the what?!
Merely put, the DCC SMS is a tremendous safe different communications community and cloud service providing exceptionally excessive ranges of safety, availability and reliability – a lot extra so than the extra conventional dwelling wifi networks or personal firm’s cloud networks. We at present solely use it to ship us sensible meter information.
Following up to now?
In an effort to management these sensible units by the DCC SMS, every system in query should leap by quite a lot of pre-set, tough hoops in hopes of reaching Business Product Assurance (CPA). Now, I’m not going to provide you a mind ache with the nitty gritty element however the spotlight reel is that it’s a group of rigorous engineering ideas and practices that ensures corporations can show the acute safety capabilities of their merchandise.
Why trouble?
Conserving the power grid safe is essential.
If it was ever critically compromised, elements of it may very well be switched off fully, inflicting an imbalance of provide and demand – which might have catastrophic penalties.
For instance, in 2019 a lightning bolt zapped a transmission line, inflicting a fuel generator and offshore wind farm to disconnect utterly from the grid. This brought on an enormous blackout, impacting over 1 million individuals and a number of prepare strains. So if we’re in a position to discover prevention strategies to cease this from ever taking place, after all we’re going to.
When Electrical Car (EV) chargers and different excessive consumption home equipment develop into the norm, they are going to have an enormous collective impression on the grid.
For instance, if everybody all of a sudden plugged of their EV on the similar time the massive demand on native elements of the grid may have an effect on the frequency and voltage inflicting all types of knock-on results.
We’re a tech-first, customer-first power provider, information and digital safety is paramount. I’m positive you’re all very conscious of corporations who’ve had giant information breaches, so I’m not going to call and disgrace so we’re being proactive in doing all the things in our energy to be as safe as attainable.
Our tremendous sensible agile tariffs have been used for greater than 4 years to handle dwelling units with none safety incidents and now, having the chance to really innovate and lead the analysis into an alternate safety resolution that would have the potential to revolutionise sensible power units, is mind-blowing – and it’s only a minute sneak-peak into the fascinating world of our tech analysis guru’s, right here at Octopus.
What’re we hoping to realize?
We’re honoured to be one of many very first corporations testing this new community on sensible units.
We’re trying to show our Octopus tech can talk related power information and obtain management alerts over the DCC SMS community securely and effectively.
By proving our tech works nice with this extremely safe community, future clients can get the advantages of sensible power with much more safety and privateness assurance.
BEIS have chosen a set of 5 initiatives to finish Section 1 and we’re hoping to progress to Section 2 from April 2023. If we’re profitable, we’ll develop the entire resolution and full the trial over 22 months.
Make sure you watch this house as we’ll be in search of trial members mid-2023 if we’re profitable. Learn in additional element right here.
