Edinburgh based Martin Energy Ltd (MEL) was founded to develop new ways of balancing electricity supply and demand without the need for regular and wasteful starts and partloading of fossil fuel power stations. Reducing this will help cut emissions directly and help the network/grid electricity system absorb larger amounts of electricity produced from renewables sources.
The core service is Flexitricity, a communications and control system which aggregates flexible processes on the demand side of the electricity business. Anything from standby generators to short term load reductions can be connected to Flexitricity and used to manage demand peaks or shortfalls in generation, far more efficiently than large power stations.
MEL's project takes Combined Heat and Power (CHP), already the most efficient way to use fossil fuels, and enhances both the environmental savings and economic potential of the technology.The Flexitricity system will be an aggregated control and monitoring system to interface with district heating CHP installations, and combine them into a single, large "virtual" power station which will be large enough to trade actively on the electricity markets.
The Flexitricity CHP project reduces overall emissions through two sources of carbon dioxide savings. Firstly, with direct saving by displacing spinning reserve - between 300 and 750 tonnes of carbon dioxide are saved annually for each megawatt of balancing capacity provided in this way. Secondly, there is potential to make indirect savings by fostering growth in renewables and in CHP itself.