A Detailed Explination

Grid Sharing

Grid sharing is a term that is being used more often in relation to battery storage. Essentially grid sharing is the idea of batteries with shared software sending energy between each other. This prevents wasting energy and decentralising the use of the grid and suppliers that provide this energy to domestic homes across the country.

How That Works

This is done by using machine learning which predicts household load generation. Social Energy are aiming to use the software, exporting and importing at basic prices. Batteries come with a grid monitoring box that is constantly sending data and information to the SE cloud.

Their software is an intelligent digital technology, creating a customer profile for you and recording usage patterns for the grid. This means they can accurately anticipate your solar generation by accounting for the size of your system and weather forecasts 24 hours in advance, allowing you to use all of your free energy produced by the solar system maximising your savings. It also means the energy you produce can be drawn by Social Energy so you can earn too.

Do I Keep My FiT Payments?

If your current system is already signed up on the Feed-In Tariff (FiT) payment scheme, it may not be worth considering Social Energy. This is because you will have the waiver the Export Tariff in order for you to be eligible to trade energy through the SE platform. It would be up to your dicretion by working out the difference so you can make an informed decision.

This doesn't mean that if your FiT registered solar system will stop you benefiting from the installation of a battery. Storing any surplus energy generated by your panels means you can use this at times when the system isn't producing. As well as this, there are time-of-use tariffs offered by energy suppliers which means you can switch and also store cheap electricity from the grid.

Fastest Reacting Power Plant

Balancing our energy has become more important due to the increase in renewables used in the grid. Battery storage allows for flexibility, this means when energy is needed, properties that are part of the Social Energy network will have the fastest reacting power source.

If you were wondering, this is the speed each source of energy can react:

Wind & Solar: uncontrollable
Nuclear: 48 hours
Oil Fired: 12 hours
Coal Fired: 6 hours
CCGT: 12 hours
Gas Turbines: 2 minutes
Hydro: 10 seconds
Battery Storage: subsecond

Full automation means Social Energy can detect changes in the grid's frequency, then react the fasted to provide power. The National Grid then pay you for your energy at high demand.

Energy Trading

Social Energy's trading platform allows you to buy and sell to the wholesale energy market. The price is the rate that energy suppliers will pay to obtain energy from each source of generation. Prices will fluctuate with supply and demand every half hour.

This is similar to the stock market, for example. However, thanks to Social Energy’s AI, you don’t have to do anything. The software predicts when prices are high and low; the battery can then charge, store and discharge energy accordingly. This automated trading allows you to benefit from wholesale price changes which have never been possible before.

Thanks to Social Energy's AI system, you don't have to do anything. Software will predict when prices are high and low; the battery will then charge, store the energy and discharge at the right time. This automation allows you to benefit from the wholesale price changes which has never been a possibility in the past.