2018
In April 2018, we installed 12 solar panels on the roof of our family home in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. This suddenly meant that we became eligible to participate in the City-zen pilot to transform our home into a Virtual Power Plant.
Why is this interesting?
I constantly use my family’s home as a laboratory for smart energy experiments. Home batteries are now affordable and accessible, they are becoming a key solution in accelerating the future of flexible energy. The best part is that participants were given the batteries free to use during this pilot!
SOLUTION
Thanks to the beautifully designed online and mobile apps we can teach our kids how much energy we are producing, consuming and storing every day, week and month. Being early adopters we are proud to say that we are preparing our kids to be the first ‘energy independent generation’.
Once home energy storage is proven to be functional and viable, the obvious next step will be for homeowners to start selling their locally stored and produced energy directly to their neighbors, friends, schools, shops etc as an exchange (or online energy brokerage). Energy will then become a new currency. Earlier this year, City-zen organised a workshop with the participants of the Virtual Power Plant pilot in Nieuw West. It was incredibly insightful to engage fellow solar & home battery owners and define what the future of virtual energy is for our district.’