DistGen - Market analysis for miniGRID (Controller for managing diverse local energy supplies and consumer demand)

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There is an increasing awareness that renewable energy production is important, for a widerange of environmental, social and economic reasons, as electricity from fossil fuels gets evermore expensive and scarce. Since key producer countries like Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq andIran have unpredictable socio-economic circumstances of their own, the supply of fossil fuelsis increasingly unpredictable. Furthermore, the cost and reliablity of energy from the nationalgrid is increasingly called into question - it needs expensive upgrading and there is nosustainable plan to do so.As a result, many local communities are beginning to use a variety of energy productionsources. Typically electricity from the national grid is being supplemented by local renewableenergy from solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal and hydro facilities. We at DistGen havean idea that this diverse range of local energy production facilities needs to be managed by alocal computer-controlled device, in order to manage in real-time the various local energysources that are available and to match local consumer demand.We call this device the Semi-autonomous miniGRID Controller or "SmC".We do not believe that such a device exists at this scale which addresses the needs of a localcommunity, and yet we believe that this is the scale that is best suited to communities takingrelevant and appropriate action to address these critical matters for themselves.This project is clearly innovative as there is no such device commercially available presentlyat this scale, and obviously the project has direct environmental, social and economic benefitsin the UK and abroad.Our objective is to enable communities to deploy a range of local energy production in anintegrated way, so that diverse local facilities can be deployed effectively and efficiently.Without a device such as the SmC each local community will have to solve this integration oflocal demand and supply for themselves.