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The Smart Islands programme is intended to sustainably and affordably tackle some of the Isles of Scilly’s main infrastructure and utilities issues, whilst providing a model for how other communities can profit from a rapid transition from being carbon intensive to having a low carbon footprint.

The Smart Energy Islands (SEI) project is a fundamental pillar of the Smart Islands Programme. The main role of the project will be to develop an Internet of Things (IoT) solution that will control electricity loads in houses and businesses, as well as energy vehicles and other infrastructure. Without this IoT solution the Smart Islands ambitions could not be met.

The project will also develop new innovative local energy market models, which will enable a number of other social, economic and environmental outcomes for the community. More specifically the project will achieve this through delivering the below activities

Activity 1 – IoT Platform design and implementation.

Central IoT Platform to enable the ongoing deployment of energy infrastructure by balancing of local energy generation and consumption.

Activity 2 – Renewable Energy Deployment

Solar Photovoltaics and Home Energy Management Systems devices deployed on 100 social houses, with 10 being Smart Homes with a mixture of Air Source Heat Pumps and batteries.

Activity 3 – Home and Building Energy Management Systems design and implementation

Solution to control and optimise the technologies deployed in Activity 2 and integrated into the island wide platform that will be developed in Activity 1.

Activity 4 – Electric Vehicle Energy Management System design and implementation

IoT solution to optimise the use of electric vehicles for local energy balancing.

Activity 5 – User experience design and implementation

Develop design guidelines to ensure a smooth customer journey and consistent customer experience for developments in other activities.

Activity 6 – Commercial Model & Business Support

Develop the local energy market models and lead business support and community engagement.

The principal objective of this project is to design, deploy and test an innovative IoT solution to demonstrate a replicable model for how a discrete locality can rapidly de-carbonise.

More specifically the project will:

  • Unlock the current commercial and technical constraints on the Islands, which are currently stopping the islands from realising their low carbon objectives such as delivering 448kW of renewable energy and  CO2e savings.
  • Maximise economic benefits by ensuring local businesses are supported to actively engage with the innovative opportunities to both develop new products and services and directly benefit from the Smart Energy infrastructure. This will involve supporting 200 businesses on the Isles of Scilly and in Cornwall.
  • Improve social outcomes for the community by providing the infrastructure to reduce fuel poverty through enabling a local energy market and raising aspirations, by working with the Five Islands School to engage with the SEI project and wider Smart Islands Programme.
  • Improve the energy efficiency of 100 social housing tenants on the islands.

These objectives have been developed and designed to be intrinsically aligned to the objectives of both the Local Enterprise Partnership Structural and Investment Funds strategy and ERDF Operational Programme as well as other local, regional, national and European objectives.