New alliance dubbed ‘Project Mercury’ officially launched

First announced at the WIRED x Octopus Energy Tech Summit on the 10^th October, Octopus Energy Group have now officially launched Project Mercury, a new alliance which it is hoped will bring together clean technology providers operating within the energy sector.

Octopus hopes that by establishing a global consortium of hardware manufacturers it can create a series of standards known as ‘Mercury Enabled’. These technical guidelines will certify device interoperability and functionality to support energy grids balancing supply and demand.

With an estimated 200 million cleantech devices predicted to be in use by 2030, it is hoped that Project Mercury will encourage industry collaboration to drive adoption, promote consumer participation in global demand flexibility schemes, and help drive uptake of smart energy tariffs. The standards will help to simplify the switch to clean technology devices for consumers using products such as heat pumps, solar panels, EV chargers and batteries.

Greg Jackson, Founder of Octopus Energy Group, has said: “Just as Bluetooth set a global standard for tech devices, we need a similar approach for energy – allowing millions of smart energy technologies to seamlessly integrate with each other”[i].

“We invite the entire smart energy industry to join ‘Project Mercury’ to create common standards for the smart thermostats, heat pumps, EV chargers and batteries in our homes. This will bring us closer to a fully connected, sustainable and affordable energy ecosystem.”[ii]

Flexible power demand ‘essential’ for the UK

One of the core goals of Project Mercury is to facilitate and drive consumer participation in global demand flexibility schemes, such as Octopus Energy’s ‘Saving Sessions’, and the uptake of smart energy tariffs. Over the past two years Octopus has built the world’s largest virtual power plant (VPP), managing over 1GW of flexible demand in the UK via 200,000 connected energy devices. The company’s ‘Intelligent Octopus Go’, an electric vehicle tariff, manages 1GW of EV batteries alone. More than 150,000 of these batteries are combined through Octopus’ Kraken platform to form the VPP. Previous research stressed that flexible power demand would be 'essential' if the UK is to see meaningful benefit from the targeted 50-60 GW of offshore wind capacity being brought online by 2030[iii].

It follows the launch of Octopus’ Zero Bills smart tariff in 2022 which sees customers with low carbon devices, optimised by Octopus technologies, not required to pay for their energy. Eligible customers have homes fitted with heat pumps, batteries, and solar panels with the utility promising zero energy bills for at least five years, given the homes generate more energy than they consume.

References

[i] Octopus Energy unveils ‘Project Mercury’ – a global vision for a smart energy tech ecosystem | Octopus Energy

[ii] Ibid

[iii] 50+ GW of offshore wind only beneficial with sufficiently flexible grid

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