Northern Ireland’s Electric Storage Company has reported an average 55% cost saving per property with energy storage.

Image: Electric Storage Company

Project Girona, Northern Ireland’s first smart grid project, was designed by The Electric Storage Company to demonstrate the potential benefits of a smart local energy storage system in combination with rooftop solar PV.

The £4.5 million (US$5 million) project involved a total of 60 properties, including two businesses, two community centres, two farms and 54 homes in the Ballysally area of Coleraine in the north of Northern Ireland, which were fitted with the solar panels and storage batteries (the latter the SB10 from Sonnen).

The project results are that over the course of a year a total of 171MWh of renewable electricity was generated, of which 31MWh was exported to the grid, and 40.2t of CO2 was saved.

The combined savings were almost £27,000, or an average £450 per property.

Eddie McGoldrick, co-founder of The Electric Storage Company said the company had been working on bringing the technology to market for seven years.

“Combining battery storage with renewable technology is the way forward in future-proofing homes from the escalating energy costs that we’re seeing today,” he says.

“[The technology] is now available to customers across Northern Ireland, who can benefit from reduced electricity costs, whilst reducing their carbon footprint.”

Project Girona was undertaken with support from the UK government through UK Research and Innovation.

Alongside the Project Girona smart grid implementation, the Electric Storage Company also has developed the ‘Tesc One’ service to optimise the charging of the battery, such as topping up the charge at the cheapest time of use tariffs, while for businesses its Paris energy management platform is available.