2.7 billion people live without access to clean cooking fuels. The biogas sector provides less harmful, more readily available and more economic renewable energy compared to burning wood. As more biogas plants are installed it becomes increasingly hard to monitor function, provide maintenance and inform users on how best to use them. This results in decreasing efficiency and ultimately breakdowns. Biogas plants fall into disrepair and users return to burning biomass.

Our low-cost monitoring system spots faulty biogas plants in real-time. It connects owners with support and local technicians able to provide advice and facilitate repairs. The technology is being commercialised through our co-owned company Inclusive Energy.

Formed in 2018, Farm-Hand builds weather precision irrigation systems and data analytics for the small to medium holder farmer and the agricultural ecosystem. By delivering the right volume of water to crops at the right time, Farm-Hand’s systems can help users reduce water consumption, fertiliser usage, energy costs, and labour time, while improving crop yields and soil quality. Following successful field trials in India which yielded a 60% reduction in water and energy needs and a 30% increase in crop yield, Farm-Hand is now testing further iterations of its systems and developing new insights for agriculturae stakeholders globally.

Farm-Hand origins stem from Innovate UK-funded ‘SCORRES’ project in partnership with Heriott Watt University, Auraventi, Auroville Consulting Scene Connect, and Findhorn Foundation College, which aimed to pilot smart irrigation schedules on farms in Tamil Nadu, India. The project won two Rushlight Awards, and was shortlisted for a Times Higher Education collaboration award. The company was also the National Winner of the Shell Springboard competition and the Scottish EDGE Round 12 Wildcard Award 2018.

The two dominant ways of providing off-grid electricity access in Africa and India are through standalone solar-home systems and mini-grids. EMBLEM offers a new approach to energy access by integrating the best aspects of both together. Scene is developing a mini-grid controller that allows for the interconnection of solar-home systems and other renewable energy assets into a modular mini-grid. EMBLEM allows for mini-grids to evolve in size and electrical capacity to match organic community economic development. Rural customers can now power income-generating appliances like milling machines. And by using peer-to-peer energy trading software, EMBLEM can enable new business models in which customers are be rewarded for producing electricity.

EMBLEM is an R&D project trialed in Rwanda in 2020 and funded through Innovate UK.

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ZUoS is an Energy Services Platform focused on optimising energy use at the building, neighbourhood and local network level through real-time monitoring, communication, and control of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) to provide system flexibility. Its purpose is to allow energy system operators to automate energy services, increasing efficiency and generating value; enabling agile system management while rewarding local generation and supply. This will optimise and incentivise:

• Grid utilisation by allowing increased connections within a local network area, avoiding or postponing network upgrades by balancing supply and demand;

• System efficiency by facilitating new business models for energy suppliers through flexibility controls, in particular the ability to offer Energy-as-a-Service;

• Uptake of DER assets by providing financial benefits for flexibility services through local energy markets, and emerging DSO/TSO markets.

The product is currently being piloted across a community in Huntly (Aberdeenshire) and across Council buildings for Perth and Kinross Council.

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