EcoHome Lab: Local Energy Communities

This month is about Local Energy Communities - a new entity in the European energy market - and what they mean for how we generate and consume energy.

Our guest speaker will be Joannes Laveyne (@Laveyne_J) from Ghent University in Belgium who will talk about some interesting projects involving collective voltage control of solar PV inverters using open source software!

Ben will give an overview of the new Carbon Co-op demand side response service - powershaper.io - and how to get involved in the beta testing and demonstrate some actual demand side response using his home heating system. We will also show the hardware we are using to make this happen.

Afterwards (at about 7.30) we will head off to the pub.

More details to follow.
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Now in our regular monthly slot - every second Thursday of the month. A hangout for people taking control of their home energy usage and generation. We use open-source hardware and software to gain a better understanding of energy in our homes, how to make the best use of the energy we generate and reduce energy wasted.

This is a CarbonCo-op (http://carbon.coop/) initiative working close together with OpenEnergyMonitor (https://openenergymonitor.org).

Topics will include:

• Home energy monitoring.

• House energy performance assessment

• Sensors - electricity, gas, temperature, humidity, air quality...

• User interfaces, dashboards

• Smart houses and automation

• Aggregation of data sources

• Taking the power back! - Making better use of the surplus power we generate

Who is it for?

• Anyone with skills in physical electronics, web development or programming who wants to use that knowledge to reduce energy and carbon!

• There will be open space for small groups to focus on adding new sensors or hacking the user interface, there will always be a 'newbies' group for people interested in finding out more.