Ampere launches energy storage and management product for energy communities

Spanish solar-plus-storage self-consumption company Ampere Energy has officially launched the energy community and smart grid software it introduced in 2023.

Ampere, owned by Chilean oil company Copec since 2023, told pv magazine Ampere Communities is “the first platform in Spain for managing energy communities, with smart batteries, [five-second] real-time response, and variable distribution.”

The system works with the SEMS Buffer solar energy management and energy storage solution launched by Ampere in 2022, for large-scale self-consumption electricity users. That product is configured to participate in solar communities based on aggregated solar generation and consumption.

The company said Ampere Communities offers “a comprehensive and market-first solution that combines hardware, software, [energy] storage, and intelligent energy management.” The product, said Ampere, is “not just a technological solution but a new way of understanding energy: Decentralized, shared, and optimized in real time thanks to artificial intelligence.”

Ampere Communities’ AI and smart batteries learns community consumption habits and adjusts electricity distribution accordingly, in real-time.

The product can reduce energy costs up to 80% and quadruple communities’ energy independence, according to its developer, achieving up to 40% more savings and 35% more autonomy than energy communities without energy storage. “Its flexibility and scalability allow for integration with new technologies and adapts seamlessly to community growth,” Ampere added.

Ampere said energy for its communities is bought and sold on the market via the company’s virtual power plant, which participates in grid balancing services markets.

Success stories

Ampere says its system’s batteries “learn from the community and react organically to its demand,” unlike other digital energy community management software, which focuses chiefly on accounting for consumption.

Ampere Communities offers everything rival systems do, says the developer, including logging energy consumed from the community and the grid daily, or per tariff period; logging surpluses and related income, and learning when they occurred; observing the generation profile of participating systems; and analyzing consumption profiles against assigned generation profiles. The battery-compatible platform also enables virtual metering to maximize bill savings and performance and can assess electricity distribution in the community after delivery.

The platform offers updates every five seconds for the total energy community and each member, including generation profiles; observation of individual battery inverter power and state-of-charge, and of total community electricity consumption, surpluses, and utilization. The product also generates hourly transaction reports.

Ampere’s product has been deployed at Puente Caldelas, in Galicia, where 60 homes connected to two large-scale storage units, including a 120 kWh SEMS Buffer, and 218 kWp of solar generation capacity. That community saw cost savings of up to 50%. In Ballesteros de Calatrava, in Ciudad Real, a 29-home energy community has covered up to 80% of its energy needs thanks to Ampere’s smart storage.

Founded in 2015, Ampere Energy operates in Spain, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Latin America.

From pv magazine España.