Published:
Dr Valentin Robu, assistant professor in Heriot-Watt's Institute of Sensors, Signals and Systems, is working with Upside Energy on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), funded by Innovate UK.
Upside was founded in 2013 and aims to reduce greenhouse gases by designing an intelligent system that helps people make smart choices about using energy outside of peak times.
Demand response is emerging as a key technology to assure the stability of next-generation power grids, and there is an increasing need for smart control strategies that enable distributed energy storage assets to perform demand response.
Upside has developed an Advanced Algorithmic Platform (AAP), an ensemble of algorithms that manage demand response of different devices to be run in parallel: the aim is to develop a smart energy system that balances demand and supply in an environmentally friendly way.
Dr Graham Oakes, founder and CEO of Upside Energy, said “Our strategy is to work with academic partners to develop the intellectual property that will be at the heart of an intelligent energy system, one where resources are used carefully and thoughtfully and at low cost, with minimal impact on the environment. This partnership with Heriot-Watt is a great example of that strategy coming to fruition.”
Dr Valentin Robu said, “Demand response is emerging as a key technology to assure the stability of next-generation power grids, and there is an increasing need for smart control strategies that enable distributed energy storage assets to perform demand response.
“Techniques developed in the machine learning (ML) and distributed artificial intelligence (AI) communities will have an increasing role to play in enabling these efforts. ML and AI techniques can help not only in the design of control algorithms for individual assets, but also in the selection process of which of these algorithms perform the best under specific scenarios and conditions on the grid.”