Machine learning energy start-up wins funding for virtual cloud service

New grant funding has been awarded to an energy demand response project using machine learning and artificial intelligence to manage a portfolio of storage assets and provide real-time energy reserves to the grid. A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) grant worth £98,400 has been awarded to Upside Energy and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh which will be used to fund a researcher over two years to grow the company's algorithms for grid prediction and demand response portfolio management. Upside Energy's Virtual Energy Store aims to relieve stress on the grid by managing a number of distributed storage resources to reduce reliance on the spinning reserve capacity provided by traditional power stations. The energy start-up's cloud service currently coordinates batteries and other devices across around 40 sites but has the potential to manage thousands more across a broad portfolio of technologies, including small batteries within uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), electric vehicles and solar PV. Upside will now work with Heriot-Watt University to optimise its existing selection of control algorithms and how they are utilised in different scenarios using the university's specialist skills in machine learning and artificial intelligence.