Faraday Grid, a clean tech start-up based in Scotland, UK has launched a global marketing campaign for its latest transformer, claiming it could do for electricity networks what the router did for the telecoms sector in the 1990s, reports EURACTIV.

"We've invented the router of the electricity system," said Matthew Williams, one of the co-founders of the Scottish start-up, to EURACTIV in an interview.

As power networks are coming under unprecedented strain with having to integrate vast amounts of electricity from traditional sources and growing shares of variable electricity coming from a multitude of smaller-scale wind and solar plants, the cost of congestion in Germany alone hit a record $1.5 billion in 2017. And the problem is only going to get worse as more than half of Europe's electricity is expected to come from renewables by 2030, Williams said.

Faraday Grid claims to have a solution that can enable 80% renewables.

According to Williams, Faraday exchangers are designed to be a drop-in replacement for the millions of traditional transformers that are currently scattered across the European power network.

As soon as one is installed, "it immediately makes the local electricity area better," Williams said. And when more are added to the network, "they coordinate to form a network" similar to what routers do for the internet, he explained.

As a result, higher shares of renewables can immediately be added to the electricity system at any moment "while maintaining the stability" of the grid, he said.

More details from this interview can be read here.

Source: Euractiv