A new partnership between Lightsource Labs, a subsidiary of Lightsource bp, Huawei, and renewable energy solutions firm Midsummer, aims to help UK households to reduce energy costs by 20%.
The three companies will be integrating solar, battery energy storage and energy management solutions to increase consumer self-consumption and energy savings.
Huawei will offer its inverter and solar energy solution for integration with Lightsource Lab’s home energy management kit Tribe. Midsummer will distribute the integrated solution to its customers across the UK.
Tribe is a machine learning-enabled solution comprising connected home apps and hardware to help consumers to monitor, control and schedule devices’ energy usage from a single platform.
The technology leverages weather data, consumer’s previous energy usage and generation data and data from utility companies to maximize onsite energy generation and usage. This helps consumers to avoid using electricity on the main grid during peak periods, helping them to avoid the high costs associated with those peaks.
Lightsource Labs will be working with Midsummer and utility companies including UK Power Networks and Western Power Distribution to expand grid flexibility using Tribe.
Ben Kott, CEO of Lightsource Labs, said: “With an increasing number of flexible loads in the home and the launch of innovative time-of-use tariffs, the opportunity to orchestrate and optimise connected devices to improve self-consumption and minimise energy bills is growing.”
Jamie Vaux, Commercial Director for Midsummer, comments: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Lightsource Labs on launching Tribe in the UK. Managing and optimising home energy flows is the key to making homeowners’ energy assets work for them, and something that they are looking for – especially if it can improve their savings and learn their needs.”
Michael Rae, Channel Director for Huawei, adds: “We are excited to be part of this innovative offering for UK solar customers as a result of the extensive interoperability testing which has been conducted by the R&D teams at Huawei and Lightsource Labs. Huawei’s One-Fits-All Residential Smart PV Solution comprises inverter, energy storage, optimiser, power sensor, etc. to provide up to 30% more energy yield, and equipped with AFCI (Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter) function to detect arc faults and shutdown the inverter in 0.5 seconds.”
