Backed by investment group Eurazeo, the seven year old start-up operates services including microgrid trading of clean power generated on office campuses & industrial estates up and down the country.  Linking generating commercial tenants to consuming companies in neighbouring or adjacent premises is a key offering.

UrbanChain’s founders Somayeh Taheri and Mo Hajhashem, pictured, described the licence grant as a major milestone. It permits UC Energy Ltd to supply to non-domestic premises, elevating the quality of its product array offering to customers, while ensuring more control for its generator clients.

The two originators met at Manchester University and launched Urban Chain in 2017. It is based on the city’s Science Park.

Chief operating officer Mo said: “Obtaining our electricity supply licence from Ofgem ranks extremely high, as you have to pass a very rigorous due diligence process. It’s a major turning point for us.”

“This step will enable us to step up our ability to offer customers a real traceable choice of energy and advance UrbanChain’s plans for granular ESG ( – environmental, societal & governance  – ) tracking.”

UrbanChain’s deeptech platform for peer-to-peer energy exchange uses integrated smart contracts and machine learning to match generators of renewable energy and consumers on a half hourly basis – resulting in secure energy prices and secure physical flows for energy generators.

Local government organisations, companies from across the private sector, generators of renewable energy, energy suppliers and domestic households all trade within the regulated platform.

Two months ago, the company allied with business supplier Equans & Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council to create a virtual power plant (VPP) across council-owned buildings & homes on the West Midlands authority’s Brockmoor estate.

Reacting to Ofgem’s licence grant, the recipient’s portfolio director Garry Pickering explained:

“With UrbanChain now an official energy supplier, it ensures we have full control of our peer-to-peer matching process which enables greater security for generators of renewable energy.

“We will also have clearer transparency on data flows and it will allow us to roll out a new suite of products, ensuring generators have true choice in where their generation goes.”

UrbanChain employs 30 people. This month it revealed it is gearing up for a Series B funding round push towards the end of this year.

It follows last year’s successful raising of £5.25 million, led by Eurazeo.  Further backing comes at present from the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero and Innovate UK.

Somayeh Taheri, UrbanChain CEO, said: “We started UrbanChain with a mission to alleviate fuel poverty and to fix a broken inefficient energy market model.

“Our social responsibility values haven’t wavered and we see ourselves as more than a platform or an energy exchange, our role is to create communities.

“Renewable energy is not just for the well off and we are tackling this. Our goal is to connect as many generators as possible to their regional communities and local businesses.

“Peer-to-peer energy exchange is a choice in itself and if we can help all parts of society become renewable prosumers then we are succeeding in our core missions.”

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Numerous, interlocking dimensions of improvement are flagged as necessary in the ENA’s Energy Innovation Atlas, a report developed by consultants LCP Delta.

LCP Delta interviewed 300 industry representatives for their views on innovation needed to achieve Net Zero. The study sought input on five key pillars of innovation;

• developing assets and infrastructure,
• facilitating digitalisation,
• managing assets and optimising systems,
• meeting customers’ needs, and
• attracting talent and investment

Over eight workshops and associated online consultations, LCP Delta and the ENA explored these key pillars to identify 24 innovation ‘way points’, characterised by knotty challenges, all requiring a vision on managers’ change of mindset and skills.

Key findings from the report include:

• Developing by 2028 a supply chain that is fit-for-purpose, able to underpin an expansion I Britain’s transmission & distribution network, enabling radical transformation in their functions
• Better communication within and external to the power industry, supporting a ‘whole systems’ approach.
• Opening up access to markets access, welcoming in smaller innovators to fair and easy participation, as well as easing funding access to smaller players.
• Clarifying a workable definition of energy storage, and freeing its providers to operate assets more proactively it across the network, against a proposed deadline of 2032.
• Communicating better with customers and the wider public, ensure roles and their consequences in who and how Britain’s energy system must be decarbonised. New skills functions and data sets are required.

Commenting on the report’s findings, Tom Veli, energy networks head at LCP Delta, the ENA’s advisors, said:

“Energy networks are at a critical point with demand beginning to increase rapidly as the low-carbon economy picks up further.

“This means that operators are facing the challenge of rapidly developing their networks as they look to accommodate the surging demand.

“This monumental shift imposes extra responsibilities on the networks, particularly in respect of interactions with customers, with the industry, alongside regulators and policymakers. The industry must drive a concerted effort into delivering the innovations that are needed.

To access the full report, click here.

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Distributed switches & cables managers SP Energy Networks are claiming a UK first with their Predict4Resilience initiative, designed to anticipate and correct potential faults before they occur.

The revolutionary supply-preserving £5 million venture will spot ‘over-the-horizon’ snares as much as seven days in advance, allowing the DNO to mobilise kit and technicians to minimise black- and brown-outs.

Machine learning provided by data science consultants Sia Partners is the knitting that links together historic data on weather and faults, asset performance, and even landscapes information.

Combined with real-time weather forecasting, Predict4Resilience will inform SP Energy Networks’ control room with unprecedented accuracy about where the weather will hit and what damage it’s expected to cause.

As the climate catastrophe deepens, power companies are looking to widen research partnerships, to avoid mayhem caused by increasingly frequent events such as last week’s Storm Ciaran.  Glasgow University’s schools of maths & statistics is a third partner in Predict4Resilience.

A fourth is Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Distribution. It will use the findings to test a different regulatory area, testing the project’s applicability to a wider network.

SP Energy Networks’ chief operating officer Guy Jefferson said: “We know the disruption severe weather can bring to our customers. We constantly investigate new technologies that could be used to keep this disruption to a minimum“.

£4.5million from the Strategic Innovation Fund jointly run by Ofgem and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) underpins Predict4Resilience, in line with the fund’s remit to accelerate power-shifters’ transition to Net Zero.

SP Energy Networks runs transmission & distribution switches & cables including 30,000 substations serving over 6 million customers across 3.5m homes and businesses throughout central & southern Scotland, as far south as Shropshire, Merseyside and mid-Wales.  The combine budgets £7 billion in the current RIIO-round for network upgrades.

For the AI consultants, head of data science Sebastien Gerber said: “Sia Partners will continue its work from the previous phase of the project where it led the development of the solution prototype and built the supporting business case to secure further funding from Ofgem.

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