This article first appeared in the New Statesman supplement 'Smartening up: Powering the UK's future energy needs through innovationandtechnology', sponsored by IBM.

The Isle of Wight is known for many qualities: its outstanding beauty, 13 award winning beaches and 500 miles of footpaths through unspoilt scenery, making it a favourite holiday destination for many. What it is not so widely recognised for - for the time being at least - is its pioneering approach to sustainability. It is, or at least it will be, with the help of several partners, a smart community - England's first EcoIsland.

At a time when many commentators struggle to define what a smart grid is, the prospect of describing a smart community is an even more daunting task.

The concept of a smart community has not been dreamt up by clever young things in marketing to enable organisations to cross-sell a wider selection of their portfolio. Instead it can be considered as a community that exploits technology to provide cost and efficiency benefits. In the main, it is becoming increasingly aligned to one specific societal need - that of energy sustainability.

With electricity demand expected to increase and with intermittent power sources, such as wind and solar, forming an ever greater part of our energy mix, a balance is required between demand and supply at all levels, from the national transmission grid through to local distribution networks that deliver electricty to our businesses, homes and schools. It is achieving this equilibrium, combined with the drive to decarbonise our energy value chain, which is fundamentally at the heart of most emerging smart communities.

This required demand and supply balance could, of course, be left to the systems operater, National Grid. It is, after all, its job. However, given the target of generating 30 per cent of our power from renewables by 2020, plus the even more onerous ambitions beyond that, the key question remains, what will National Grid balance renewables with?

Renewables are, by their very nature, intermittent and unpredictable; extensive periods of depressed generation can be followed by excess production. Currently, at times of peak demand, alternatives such as dirty diesel, standby oil-fired power stations, or other equally unattractive options are employed. However, the majority of these are both expensive and bad for the environment.

Coupled with this is the problem faced by the distribution networks. These were not built to cope with either the levels or patterns of generation and demand connected to them. Nor were they built to handle the concept of local generation, such as solar and wind, feeding power back up lines which were only designed to have power flowing down them.

The residents of the Isle of Wight believe they may have found the answer to some, if not all, of these challenges. They have embarked on an ambitious programme of change that aims to turn their home into "the ultimate EcoIsland", a region of England with the lowest carbon footprint by 2020. Central to its success are its partners which are looking at innovative ways of using technology to create a sustainable environment.

Intelligent systems

For example, Toshiba and IBM are working with the island and other companies to develop innovative ways in which demand and supply can be managed and controlled in order to maximise potential use of renewable power sources - something it is hoped will reduce emissions and waste, while at the same time cutting the Isle of Wight's fuel bills by up to 50 per cent.

Elsewhere, other initiatives include providing energy storage and clean fuel production in the form of hydrogen, installing solar power generation and heat pumps across community centres and social housing, a geothermal plant to generate energy from the hot water aquifer deep below the island, and a "Waste to Energy" scheme that aims to eradicate landfill completely.

Alongside this, facilitating solutions such as Toshiba's Energy Management Systems are being introduced. These bring intelligence into energy consumption as a means of optimising usage and improving efficiency. For example, the Home and Building Energy Management Systems can dim lights in empty rooms, delay the warming of a hot water tank or pause air conditioning. Meanwhile, Community Energy Management Systems collectively bring this capability together with distributed generation and storage devices to ensure the energy balance is maintained, while Micro Grid Energy Management Systems align this communal generation and load control with the underlying grid performance to ensure security of supply is maintained.

This is achieved, in part, through the Negawatt, which provides hypothetical negative energy consumption by reducing usage at a given point in time. As energy prices rise, as reliance on intermittent generation increases and network constraints become more prevalent, the Negawatt will provide a significant balancing tool and will, somewhat ironically, become a key part of our energy mix.
The above should enable the island to become energy self-sufficient, and will provide the rest of England with an action plan to its own smart energy systems.

That said, while much progress is being made, the aforementioned technologies are just enabling mechanisms. The real key to sustainability is the engagement of individuals, companies and communities.

For the Isle of Wight, this came in the form of the EcoIsland Partnership, a vibrant, enthusiastic entity that provided the focus, the heart and the drive to get this project off the ground. It was this partnership that brought the stakeholders together behind one common goal: to ensure the sustainability of the island while at the same time making a contribution to the low carbon aims of England as a whole.

Without partnerships of this nature, a smart community will not exist. Yet with current responsibilities for carbon reduction, security of supply and energy balancing spread between local authorities, National Grid, network operators and commercial organisations, one has to ask if EcoIsland will be a one-off, as it is currently less than certain as to where future community champions will originate.

Stephen Stead is business development director, Smart Community and Solutions at Toshiba International

This article first appeared in the New Statesman supplement 'Smartening up: Powering the UK's future energy needs through innovationandtechnology', sponsored by IBM.