Greater Manchester Local Energy Market

Project duration: July 2020 – March 2023

Across Greater Manchester, this project is looking at how the electricity needs of the GM city-region can be met through local innovations to help them achieve their target of becoming a zero-carbon emissions city region by 2038.

The Greater Manchester Local Energy Market is a 2-year project that sees Greater Manchester Combined Authority and 11 partners work together to look at how we adapt our local energy system. This includes how to accommodate shifts in supply and demand from the expected increases in electric vehicles. It’s the first project of its kind to be delivered at scale across a city-region.

The project is funded by InnovateUK (opens in a new window) and the 11 partners are:

Bruntwood
OvoEnergy
Carbon Co-Op
Hitachi
Daikin
Cornwall Insight
Graham Oakes Consulting
Cadent
Regen
Electricity North West
Northwards Housing

The project will investigate ways to increase the use of smart technologies and local storage of energy to spread the increase in peak loads these changes may bring. It will also factor in the increases in our population and number of homes.

The project vision combines two key themes:

A place-based approach to Local Area Energy Planning (LEAP), bringing together the demands of the energy transition with a traditional local authority-led approach to planning, enabling us all to understand where and what we need to retrofit, where to place future energy assets and to support the network operators to plan based on an informed regional position. New services and tariffs to support and enable the changes and measure identified through the Local Area Energy Planning.
The design and development of unique tools required to optimise how we use, trade and supply energy across the region in the form a new Local Energy Market (LEM).The GM LEM will support the integration of new smart technologies across heat, power and transport, capable of responding to local energy network distribution and national energy transmission.

The design for the project puts customers at the heart of our approach, incorporating commercial property clients, early adopter owner occupiers, social housing tenants and the public sector. This approach creates an understanding of customer needs and energy usage levels. Recognising the economic, environmental and societal challenges the energy transition presents, the project involves citizens, the public and private sector and seeks to protect the most vulnerable in society from the impact of rising energy bills or poor-quality homes.

The consortia has commissioned the Energy Systems Catapult to deliver the first region-wide Local Area Energy plan, encompassing all 10 districts from street level to Energy network.

KrakenFlex will support the design and integration of the new Local Energy Market.

Regen is leading on the investor relations and business plan work package, developing an investor prospectus that will setout the roadmap of the LEM from now until 2038 and how it can be achieved. We are also supporting other partners on the business models, buildings and user-centric design work packages.

The project page is available here.