Europe starts work on making buildings smarter

The European Commission is proposing that a voluntary scheme for rating the “smart readiness” of buildings be adopted by the end of 2019. This scheme will include the development of a smart readiness indicator, and a methodology to calculate this.

Buildings are becoming micro-energy hubs, but the building sector is lagging behind in understanding the implications.

(A version of this article was published on The Fifth Estate on 10 July 2017.)

In Europe, part of the problem is a lack of high-quality data on the building stock. This is hampering efforts to reduce the amount of energy buildings use. There is no consistent data to form a baseline for the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) that rate buildings’ energy use.

This problem is to be tackled from one direction by the development of a voluntary “smart readiness indicator” (SRI) for buildings. The SRI would measure buildings’ capacity to use ICT and electronic systems to optimise operation and interact with the grid.

But, just as there’s no consistent data, there is also no universally accepted definition of what makes a smart building, and there are few initiatives directly linked to indicators.

So work is now underway to try to define what an SRI for buildings looks like.

Why do it?

A smart building environment connects with many processes. Source: BPIE

An SRI’s eventual purpose is to raise awareness amongst building owners and occupants of the value of the electronic automation and monitoring of technical building systems, and to provide confidence and transparency to building users regarding the actual energy and cash savings generated.

An SRI would also align building energy performance – and the current drive to create a Single European Energy Market – with another pan-European idea: the Digital Single Market.

The rationale is that digitalisation of the energy system is rapidly changing the energy landscape, allowing easier integration of renewables, smart grids and the establishment of “smart-ready” buildings.

The benefits of 'smart buildings' Source: BPIE

As with most things in European legislation, the development of an SRI is complex. It’s bound up with the European Commission’s current process to revise a directive to improve the energy performance of buildings. By 2050, the aim is to decarbonise the building stock as part of developing a secure, competitive and decarbonised Europe-wide energy system.

This revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) was originally meant to incorporate targeted incentives to promote smart-ready systems and digital solutions in the built environment, but has since become less ambitious.

The aim is to promote energy efficiency in buildings and to support cost-effective building renovation with a view to the long term goal of decarbonising the highly inefficient existing European building stock. It’s part of a wider review of the energy efficiency legislation, combining:

• reassessment of the EU’s energy efficiency target for 2030 – which was just set at a lamentably low rate of 27 per cent
• a review of the core articles of the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive
• reinforcing the enabling financing environment including the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI)

What is an SRI?

According to the European Economic and Social Committee, a smartness indicator will measure a building’s capacity to use ICT and electronic systems to optimise operation and its interaction with the grid by developing a transparent, meaningful indicator that would add value to the EPC without imposing undue data collection or analytical burdens.

Such an indicator would show how capable a building is of letting its occupants assess energy efficiency, control and facilitate their own renewable energy production and consumption, and thus cut energy bills.

A preliminary report for the European Commission’s Energy Directorate by consultants Ecofys with colleagues in a specially created consortium, said these indicators would help with the energy management and maintenance of a building, including automated fault detection; assist in automating the reporting of the energy performance of buildings; assist with data analytics, self-learning control systems and predictive control to optimise building operations; and enable buildings to become active operators in a demand response setting.

The renewable energy context for 'smart buildings'. Source: BPIE.

Ecofys with its colleagues is developing the formal definitions for the indicators as Task 1 of a series of five stages up to the proposal of the standard in April next year.

It has listed the ten services that the indicator could cover as: heating, domestic hot water, cooling, mechanical ventilation, lighting, dynamic building envelope, energy generation, demand side management, electric vehicle charging, and monitoring and control.

The SRI must be open and transparent, in order to promote interoperability, or it will not be fit for purpose. This means that companies involved cannot monopolise or impose their own proprietary standards.

Interoperability means that devices and services are able to talk to each other in the same language. Image: Ecofys

“Smart readiness” necessarily implies a readiness to adapt in response to the needs of the occupant and to empower building occupants to take direct control of their energy consumption and/or generation, for example with the management of heating system based on occupancy sensors and dashboards displaying current and historical energy consumption.

It also implies a readiness to facilitate the maintenance and efficient operation of the building in a more automated and controlled manner, for example by indicating when systems need maintenance or repair, or using CO2 sensors to decide when to increase ventilation.

According to Paul Waide and Kjell Bettgenhäuser of Ecofys, speaking at the first conference on this topic in June, “The SRI should balance the need to reliably capture the smart readiness services and functions with the practicality and potential costs of independent assessment. It needs to be practical and provide the most benefit for the effort and cost of assessment.”

Above all, they said, “It needs to convey information which is salient (meaningful) to end-users, be easy to understand and motivate them to save energy.” It will also have to apply to all types of buildings, new and old.

An example of how the indicator could work.

This development process is expected to be complete by April 2018. Anyone interested in following or participating in the development of the indicator can sign up.

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy efficiency, building refurbishment and renewable energy. See his website here.

Energy storage: the next growth market in US and Europe

Energy storage is the currently missing link that will enable the intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar to play a much greater part in the future grid mix.

Now that more homes and businesses are installing photovoltaic systems, a new trend for combining these with battery backup is emerging.

Previously, battery storage systems were only thought necessary with solar PV and wind in stand-alone systems, separate from any grid connection, but as the grid supports more and more PV and wind systems, which can supply power only at certain times, the need for storage backup is becoming more apparent.

For large commercial installations this is especially attractive because, although they may have negotiated contracts with utilities that bring down their overall electricity rates, the fees that they are charged for the times when they do draw power, which can be based on their highest peak energy use during a month, have been rising as much as 10-12% per year.

According to Marcus Elsässer and other executives attending the Intersolar North America 2013 trade show held over the last three days, large commercial electricity users can reduce their peak demand and lower their demand charges by installing a storage system alongside a PV system.

Last month California set a proposed 2020 procurement target of 1.3GW of battery storage for network operators.

In Germany, grants from a scheme with a total value of €25 million are being offered to offer storage to existing solar installations.

Last month's Intersolar Europe trade show consequently saw over 200 exhibitors, including major brands, presenting their storage and smart grid solutions.

There, energy storage systems had their own dedicated section for the first time in any global energy trade fair. This particular show, the largest in the world for the solar industry, was attended by over 50,000 visitors from 47 different countries.

Energy storage plus PV was a key topic, with reference to many different types of storage, not just batteries, including flywheels, capacitors, heat storage and compressed air.

The German support scheme is managed by the state KfW Group bank, which provides a 600€/KW grant for new PV systems and 660€/KW grant for older systems. To receive support, systems must be in Germany, have a duration of at least five years, and no more than 60% of the installed power can be fed to the grid.

According to ">Ash Sharma of IMS Research, by 2017 the storage market is projected to be worth $19 billion, mainly due to the German scheme being taken up by residential system owners and operators of small systems up to 10 kWp.

As a whole, photovoltaic storage installations will, on average, he says, grow by over 100% for the next five years, up to nearly 7GW, rising to 40GW of battery systems by 2033.

Will this catch on here? The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is currently reviewing energy storage demonstrator proposals entered into a £17 million procurement competition.

There is a wide variety of entrants including some seemingly bizarre technologies: hybrid batteries to grid, smart energy storage, a radical proposal for using surplus energy to lift heavy aggregates that would be allowed to descend and generate energy at times of peak demand, flywheels, the use of electric vehicles for storage, liquid air, the conversion of surplus electricity into methane, cryogenic liquid nitrogen energy storage, and industrial scale lithium ion batteries.

A further potential winner under this scheme is Moixa Technology, an EU pioneer of smart direct current (DC) technologies, which has submitted a bid to install Maslow storage technology across 750 homes.

It works by shifting DC (direct current) loads from lighting, communications and electronic devices, to batteries during low tariff times, charged using local renewable sources such as solar PV, or at times of excess, wind power.

Simon Daniel, the CEO of Moixa, commented on the need for storage: “Just this week, the volatility of solar and wind resources created negative electricity prices and renewable curtailment in parts of Europe".

He says British distribution network operators face similar issues, especially at times of high sunshine, as now, or high winds. Daniel says that without using energy storage "considerable infrastructure upgrade costs, to reduce voltage issues caused by rising solar PV adoption" could result "which could otherwise lead to local blackouts or lost renewable revenue”.

He continued: “We’ve estimated that by using Maslow distributed energy storage systems with local solar PV, excess wind supply and low overnight energy prices, energy bills could be reduced by up to 30%, and keep essential consumer devices online if the grid fails”.

According to Anthony Price, director of the Electricity Storage Network, Britain should aim for an energy storage target of 2020MW (2.02GW) by 2020.

Speaking at the recent energy storage conference organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he said: “Meeting Britain’s power requirements requires energy storage as well as generating capacity. The expected shortfall in reliable generating capacity has been caused, in part, by a lack of commitment to a balanced portfolio of generation, storage and network investment.

"Adding more electricity storage into the power system will bring real long term benefits."

Sounds like a good bet for investors to me.

New trial will determine if the future of rail is wind powered

X-Wind's 6kW vertical axis wind turbine, the model for the one which could be seen alongside rail tracks throughout the country.

Britain's electrified railways could be up to 70% powered by wind turbines placed alongside the tracks, if a trial getting underway is successful.

A new project, part-funded by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, aims at reducing the carbon footprint of electrified railways using a specially designed wind turbine developed by British manufacturer X-Wind Power.

The product is billed as the world's most advanced vertical axis wind turbine. Called the XW-80, it has been designed for extreme reliability and exceptional performance on sites with restricted access and limited space.

The XW-80 can be installed at a density of 1MW per kilometre on long linear sites such as sea defences, road and rail corridors, or in small numbers to suit communities or businesses.

The technology, with its exceptional efficiency, low cost of energy, and near-silent operation, has been described as "potentially game changing" by major wind player Dong Energy.

Vertical axis wind turbines are not bothered by turbulent changes in direction of the wind, or blustery weather. They are therefore more suited to urban situations. Most wind turbines using windfarms have a horizontal axis.

In May, DECC awarded a total of £16 million in the first phase of its £35 million Energy Entrepreneurs Fund (EEF), part of which went to X-Wind Power. The programme has been set up to develop low carbon technologies for buildings and power generation and energy storage.

X-Wind’s EFP project will now take advantage of Network Rail’s unique land ownership to validate its vertical axis wind turbine technology in terms of performance, economics and safety, specifically when operating in narrow corridors and in proximity to trains.

The two-year trial consists of the design and development of an 80kW wind turbine based on X-Wind recently validated 6kW small scale generator (pictured above).

It will lead to several regional tests along Network Rail’s tracks before moving to a comprehensive rollout and the potential generation of 2,200 GWh of carbon-free electricity annually.

Michael Blaize, CEO at X-Wind Power, said: “We have made exceptional progress over the last two years, from an innovative concept to a demonstration project with the UK’s largest energy user.

"The support we have received from funding bodies such as the Technology Strategy Board and The Department of Energy and Climate Change is a clear endorsement of our technology and business strategies.”

The company believes that a distributed energy system coupled with storage technology is the only long-term energy solution for the future and that its technology could play a leading role in the supply of energy solutions globally.

Its market research has highlighted strong growth potential for the medium scale wind market. X-Wind intends to combine innovative design with robust manufacturing processes from automotive and large-scale wind industries to offer efficient and reliable products.

UK power "will be 85% more expensive" without energy storage

Without large-scale energy storage, the UK government won't meet its renewable energy ambitions, says Edwin Koot, CEO of SolarPlaza.

The price of power in the UK will be 85% more expensive than in Germany (Europe’s biggest energy market) by May 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

U.K. power will cost £53.06 per megawatt-hour in May 2015, compared with €33.30 in Germany, according to fair value calculations on Bloomberg as of 8:40 a.m. in London.

They attribute the stark difference to Germany’s advanced renewable energy programme, which accounts for 30% of power generation, compared to the UK’s, currently standing at 11.3%.

The 2015 picture compares with an average premium of 17% over the past five years and 80% today, according to data from Marex Spectron Group Ltd., a London broker.

While Germany is seeking to consolidate its status as Europe’s biggest producer of wind and solar power by boosting its share of renewables-sourced energy to 35% in 2015 from 22% last year, the UK is targeting 15% from 11% over the same period, and is predicted to fail to meet the 20% 2020 EU-wide target.

Statkraft AS is closing money-losing gas-fed plants in Germany, while Macquarie Group Ltd. (MQG) and Vitol SA are buying British power stations, betting on gains of as much as 19% in U.K. prices by 2016, according to Societe Generale SA.

“The U.K. has built significantly less renewables to date,” Ilesh Patel, a partner at Baringa Partners LLP, a consulting firm that counts EON SE and Electricite de France SA (EDF) among its clients, said. “Germany has been on a fast-track wind and solar plan.”

Many critics of investment in renewable energy in the UK point to the fact that Germany, which is investing heavily in renewable technologies in its push to abandon its reliance upon nuclear power, currently has higher power prices than the UK.

However, Ed Davey, Energy Secretary, has consistently said that Britain's programme of supporting renewable energy will eventually lead to lower prices.

The key to this development may be investment in energy storage.

Germany is offering incentives worth €25 million to help subsidise the installation of batteries alongside solar PV systems to store electricity for use at night time. Simon Daniel, Founder of energy storage company Moixa Technology, says this "is helping our European neighbour to realise the full potential of renewable technology".

The UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Gregory Barker, is to deliver the keynote speech during the upcoming Solar Future UK ’13 event on July 16 at which he is expected to enlarge on his announcement, made at the recent Intersolar conference, that Britain hopes to deploy 20 GW of PV by 2020, in relation to how this affects Britain's energy storage capacity.

At the Intersolar event, Barker said that "the UK Government is totally committed to building a world-class renewables industry” and quoted Prime Minister David Cameron as saying that he wants to "make Britain a global showcase for green innovation and energy efficiency".

At the following day's Energy Storage UK '13 conference, leading industry spokespeople and cleantech businesses from the UK’s energy storage sector will discuss how the latest energy storage systems (ESS) will advance the integration of renewable energy, such as solar PV and wind.

"Deployment potential of solar PV is greater than the UK’s grid storage capacity," comments the CEO of SolarPlaza, Edwin Koot. "Without large-scale energy storage solutions, the UK Government’s ambition to reach this figure presents a significant challenge for National Grid, which has already warned that building more than 10GW will make it difficult to manage the network in its current form."

Director of the Electricity Storage Network, Anthony Price, is warning that "if the Government does not support the use of storage as part of the solution to meet our power shortfall, we will lose this opportunity, and live to regret it.

"What is low cost now will take us down power’s one-way street. It will be difficult and costly to reverse. Our plans for the Smart Grid show we need storage and we must seize this opportunity now.”

The intermittency of solar PV and wind requires utilities to maintain additional spinning reserve from polluting power stations to pick up loads, or, in the future, use demand-side reduction techniques in the capacity market, in the event of peak demand spikes.

If the potential of intermittent renewables is to be fully realised, the National Grid will require fast-acting energy storage systems that can dispatch power and respond quickly to network imbalances, says Price.

That the power industry and policy makers are not paying sufficient attention to the challenges arising from integrating intermittent power generation into the system was felt by 60% of attendees polled at the recent POWER-GEN Europe and its co-located conference, Renewable Energy World Europe, between 4-6 June at the Messe Wien, Vienna.

Demand side response: a revolution in British energy policy

It's highly significant that demand side response is to be included in auctions for the future British electricity capacity market, as announced by DECC last Thursday, because it marks once and for all a move away from the principle that has dominated energy policy since the national grid began: of satisfying peak demand at any price.

Capacity market auctions will commence in 2014, subject to European state aide approval, and will embrace new and existing generation capacity including combined heat and power (CHP), embedded generation, energy storage, and permanent reductions in electricity demand.

Demand side response (DSR) means that small, decentralised generators and owners of stand-by generators experiencing reduced demand, or a combination of both, will be able to gain an income by selling the energy they don't need.

The UK‟s electricity system is currently sized to meet peak demands that only occur infrequently, which leads to generating plant and transmission and distribution networks being under-utilised for much of the time.

This is expensive and wasteful.

DSR will open up a huge new market, which will grow even more as the 'smart grid' spreads, by letting energy consumers become active participants in a more local and efficient energy system.

It will embrace many different kinds of energy consumers, such as businesses, farms, hospitals, hotels, universities, local authorities and commercial buildings.

As a result of this policy such enterprises will have greater confidence to invest in their own generation plant, and will have the ability to create income for themselves on a sustainable, predictable basis.

Any facility that collects real-time consumption data and is sometimes on standby to reduce energy use, or that runs standby generation that can start up upon a signal from the electricity system, will be able to participate.

Participants will be able to bid both one and four years ahead in the auctions, giving them flexibility and confidence to invest in the future.

It's also good news for combined heat and power, since much small-scale generation is CHP, producing heat and power for local networks.

The other benefits of demand side response include:

• addressing the threat to electricity supply caused by the imminent closure of coal-fired power stations;


• reducing the need to build new power stations and transmission lines;


• reducing greenhouse gas emissions by allowing power stations to operate closer to the maximum efficiency;


• avoiding transmission losses by using electricity locally;


• and reducing the need to keep power stations warm as a spinning contingency reserve.

If we compare the consumption pattern of electricity from the commercial and public sector to the demand profile for all sectors, we see that the peak demands for non-domestic buildings occur at around 11am on weekdays, whereas the total peak is between 4 and 6pm.

This is where the potential for spreading out supply and demand lies.

The potential for DSR to reduce peak demands depends on the flexibility of electricity capacity and the uses to which it is put.

The greatest flexibility is related to load with storage or inbuilt inertia, such as hot water, heating and air conditioning. Some loads, such as computing, exhibit limited flexibility, unless they are in data centres operating unused standby.

Assessments by Element Energy and the Montford University for Ofgem a year ago of the technical potential suggest that DSR measures could reduce winter peak demands in Britain due to non-domestic buildings from 1–4.5GW, but the eventual potential is likely to be much more.

There is work to be done to develop detailed policy implementation that will work well for smaller operators and ensure that the cost effectiveness of DSR is harnessed for the benefit of consumers and the wider UK economy.

A consultation by Ofgem on the subject finished on 28 June. It's probable that the results of the consultation will feed into the practical arrangements under which the capacity mechanism will operate.

Sensibly, there will be a transition period for demand side reduction and small-scale storage within the capacity market.

To this end, Ofgem and the National Grid have just launched a new consultation on transitional products aimed at paving the way for DSR.

The first potential product, Demand Side Balancing Reserve, offers a new opportunity for the demand side to participate in the provision of demand and supply balancing services.

The second, Supplemental Balancing Reserve, is aimed at generators and large users.

Of the first, National Grid is suggesting that it could buy a quantity of demand reduction capability at peak times on non-holiday weekdays during the winter for a set-up payment of between £5-10/kW per year, and utilisation payments for delivery ranging from £500/MWh to £15,000/MWh.

It's also consulting on a second product that would be the same but without the setup payment.

The idea is that this will promote significant growth in the provision of demand-side services ahead of DSR participation in the capacity market.

No one should underestimate the significance of this development: it marks the first time that Britain has moved away from an energy policy of having to supply peak demand whatever it is.

This policy has proved inefficient, insecure, expensive and impractical; the more so as energy and plant construction prices rise and we are constrained by the need to reduce carbon emissions.

It's a fabulous opportunity, and the more organisations and businesses wake up to its potential benefits for them, as well as to the effect on reducing prices for all energy consumers, the better it will be for the whole country.

Energy storage must be supported in the Energy Bill

There have been many calls for energy efficiency to be supported in the Energy Bill as it is being reformulated, before it is presented again to Parliament next month.

I totally support these, but I would like to add that there must also be support for energy storage.

Energy storage is the next big thing alongside the smart grid. But there is only a passing mention of it in the current draft of the Energy Bill.

Energy storage systems enable electricity generated at a time of low demand to be stored and used at a later time when electricity demand is high. They go hand-in-hand with the development of the smart grid.

Energy storage significantly increases the effectiveness of wind, solar and tidal generated electricity because the energy is time-shifted to peak demand, which strengthens the business case for investment in a renewable generation scheme and means fewer generation plants need to be constructed.

There is another advantage: if storage is located near the point of use, this reduces the need to invest in power delivery infrastructure and reduces transmission losses.

According to a recent Frost and Sullivan report, some energy storage technologies under development also increase the efficiency of the CHP, waste-to-energy plants and distributed gas-based smaller power plants by utilising excess electricity (and heat) to make it available when it is needed.

Finally, storage can be deployed in tandem with virtual power stations and demand-service response. This gives a national grid the ability to tap into backup power and storage owned by any company of any type connected to the grid. This will considerably open up the market for distributed energy supply, with the potential for huge business opportunities.

The UK Government is supporting innovation in this area with a freshly announced £20 million fund for feasibility and demonstration competitions.

This is fine, but we need regulatory change too. The inability of the market to support energy storage at present needs addressing.

There are many competing storage technologies, all of them interesting:

• Pumped hydro: at present there is only one example in this country


• Ceramic bipolar batteries, being supported already by the Technology Strategy Board for use with PVs


• Compressed air energy storage (CAES) and liquid air, where the main challenge is to develop adiabatic (zero-heat loss) compression to improve efficiency


• Flywheels, which are achieving ever higher speed rotation (e.g. hubless design)


• Hydrogen, generated from renewable energy, and used in conjunction with fuel cells


• Liquid metal batteries, a bizarre but fascinating innovation


• Lithium-based batteries, where developers are improving solid-state conductors, and lifetime


• Sodium-based batteries, where the challenges to improve durability and electrolytes (including solid-state)


• Redox and hydrid flow batteries, where the need is to develop low-cost membranes and real-time impurity sensing


• Supercapacitors, where the challenge is to improve high voltage electrolytes


• Thermal-to-electric storage, where the energy needs to be quicker to access and convert when required.

The UK’s Low Carbon Innovation Coordination Group estimates that, combined with the smart grid, storage solutions could save the UK £4 - 19 billion in deployment costs up to 2050.

Furthermore, innovation can help create UK based business opportunities that could contribute an estimated £6 - 34 billion to the economy from exporting our know-how abroad up to 2050.

Around the world, new energy storage deployment totaled 121MW in 2011. A forecast from Pike Research projects that this will rise to 2,353MW in 2021. In China, the world’s largest market for renewable energy, which also has the world’s largest electricity grid, GTM Research anticipates that the market for energy storage will grow to a $500 million per year market by 2016.

All of this means that there are great prizes ahead for the companies that deliver the winning solutions.

In America, energy storage is already being supported. Various projects have been funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), with $185 million of public money, which attracted $585 million of private investment.

We risk losing out in this huge global market if we do not back our own companies to the extent that America is doing.

Steven Berberich, the President and CEO of the California Independent System Operator, is of the opinion that "storage plus renewables is a marriage made in heaven".

California has a 33% renewable energy mandate and a cap and trade system starting next year. 12GW of distributed wind and solar power is expected to enter the market. Storage has the ability to cover for when there is no wind or at night time.

"It's the economics of storage we need to sort out," Berberich says.

That’s exactly what the Energy Bill should address. But Berberich believes that frequency regulation is the first market opportunity for energy storage, because it is already economic.

A ruling in the States by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that forces Independent System Operators to take into account the benefit of storage is making them see its cost-effectiveness when used for this purpose.

Two pilot projects are establishing this near New York: one, run by Beacon Power, uses 20 MW of flywheel power, the other, by AES, uses 8MW of lithium batteries.

Another frequency regulation energy storage project in EastPenn, Pennsylvania, uses 3MW of innovative batteries that look like lead acid but with one electrode containing carbon; a cross between ultracapacitors and lead acid batteries with ten times the cycle life of other batteries.

Ian Ellerington, Head of Innovation Delivery at DECC, said earlier this year that if it was possible to fit energy storage support into the Energy Bill it would be a real boost to the industry.

“The energy system has to make sure it’s cost competitive and if storage can be part of that then it would be good to have the commercial mechanism in place to take advantage of the benefits that can be realised through that,” he said.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has also called upon the Government to support electricity storage through market reform. It criticises the “lack of understanding about the flexibility of electrical storage and the wider financial benefits it can deliver”.

The way to do this in the Energy Bill is to introduce a separate market category from generation, transmission, distribution and supply.

This will mean that a market support mechanism can be targeted specifically at storage.

The proposed Capacity Mechanism, whose details require fleshing out, should be used for this purpose.

Last week, Tim Yeo, the head of the select committee on energy and climate change, called for a feed-in tariff to support energy efficiency. A similar scheme could also be an option for energy storage.

The rule change in America that made it possible for energy storage to enter the market was to force suppliers to consider energy storage on an equal basis alongside generation before making a decision on investment. This is another option that could go in the Bill.

Energy storage is an exciting and fast-moving field with huge potential, and an essential part of tomorrow’s electricity supply system.

Not to support it in the Energy Bill would be another missed opportunity.