Project duration: June 2017 to April 2020
Regen was one of the partners on OpenLV, a network innovation trial with Western Power Distribution (WPD) which gave communities and businesses access to local electricity substation data. The project trialled an open software platform in electricity substations that monitored substation performance and electricity demand for a local area, and hosted apps that enabled participants to access this data and explore uses for it which benefited communities and the network.
The software was installed in 80 Low Voltage (LV) distribution substations across WPD’s licence areas, and could ultimately be deployed in every LV and High Voltage (HV) substation in Great Britain.
Regen worked alongside the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) to support the eight community groups involved in the trial, and evaluate how useful the local electricity data was for them. For more on how communities used the data, you can read the OpenLV guidebook for community energy organisations, ‘Using data from your local substation’, with case studies on trial participants, along with more information and resources from the project.
This video sets out some of the ways open access to local electricity substation data can help to support people in fuel poverty and vulnerable customers as we transition to a smarter, decarbonised network.
OpenLV was a Western Power Distribution project, funded by the Network Innovation Competition, and delivered by EA Technology.
To find out more about the Open LV project, contact Ky Hoare at khoare@regen.co.uk.
