EFL webinar Social Housing Energy Communities #1: Smart Battery Storage – a gamechanger for urban social landlords? 

Rising energy prices, urgent climate targets and extreme weather patterns are driving innovation in how we power our homes, neighbourhoods, and cities. Locally integrated ‘energy communities’ enable residents, social landlords and other stakeholders to produce, store, and trade solar, wind and other forms of green energy. Yet the market for energy storage is still young. Scaling up the integration of renewables into housing can be complex.

This webinar presents innovations in smart battery storage with exciting applications to social housing. Dutch social landlord and EFL member Parteon recently used its own offices to test an algorithm-powered battery that optimizes local use of solar energy versus the trade of surplus power. Wichard van der Veen from Parteon joins our webinar, along with Rens Smal from Enerzien, expert in renewable energy storage. They discuss their plans to integrate solar with smart storage capacity into Parteon’s housing to power elevators and other functions. As well as saving energy, the aim is to reduce buildings’ peak energy demand, so that a large volume consumer connection to the energy grid is not needed in all cases. For Parteon, this means bypassing long waits for such a connection in urban areas and being able to house people in urgent need more rapidly, including Ukranian refugees. EFL members at varying stages of integrating solar will join the discussion to share their challenges, ask questions and identify mutual learning opportunities.