Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Matthew Williams, Founder and CTO of Faraday Grid:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Faraday Grid?
A: Faraday Grid is a private, investor backed company on a global mission to enable sustainable energy systems fit for the future.
Our eponymous system architecture, the Faraday Grid transforms existing electricity infrastructure into a multi-highway intelligent platform – and does so at no additional cost.
The time has come to think about what energy future we want. Should the current trends continue, this future will be dynamic and ever-changing. It will involve energy generation coming from a great variety of sources, including more and more variable renewables, and increasing energy demands from digital devices, electric vehicles, AI and the likes on the consumption end. Importantly, our energy future will be fueled by innovation coming from various disciplines all around the world.
The Faraday Grid enables all of this change to come in the safest and most sustainable way. By integrating into nodal points of the network, our new power flow control devices, the Faraday Exchangers unlock a system with entirely new characteristics while taking use of the existing poles and wires.
The system enabled this way provides a common platform that enables a wide variety of technologies and solutions to connect and transact. It is significantly more reliable and resilient than the existing grid, allowing more renewables, digital devices, electric vehicles and other innovative technologies to connect. It will make energy more affordable and accessible to everyone.
The Faraday Grid is not only a solution to the current issues brought on by the energy transition – it is also a system for the future that is ready to embrace change and allow a true energy evolution.
Recommended: Q: You’ve recently established your first Innovation Centres in the U.S. and in the Czech Republic; could you tell us something more?
A: Faraday has recently opened new Innovation Centres – facilities for research and development – in Washington D.C. and Prague, in addition to its original Innovation Centre in Edinburgh and other offices in London, New York and Australia.
The new Innovation Centres are supporting Faraday’s plan for rapid global expansion. The company’s core IP has real potential to transform energy systems worldwide – physics is physics everywhere, thus the Faraday technology will bring fundamental value to energy systems in every market.
Q: What’s wrong with current energy grids?
A: We, as a society, are evolving with incredible speed and we are fundamentally changing the way we generate and use energy. Yet, the power grid in-between has not changed in its basic architecture since its invention circa 100 years ago.
This grid was not designed for modern power flows and the further we push its boundaries, the closer it gets to a breaking point – as evidenced by a growing number of blackouts worldwide and rising electricity prices.
The main approach to deal with this so far has been reacting to problems as they arise, and treating the symptoms with add-on technologies. However, these expensive band aids on top of an outdated grid will not be able to take us into the energy future we desire.
Faraday Grid are system designers, working to not simply improve a specific aspect of energy, but rather enable a dynamic platform for the energy ecosystem of the future.
Q: What exactly is The Faraday Exchanger and how does it work?
A: The Faraday Exchanger is our brand-new power flow control device – a hardware, firmware, software stack. By integrating into key nodal points in the existing electricity grid, a single Exchanger device optimises power flows in its local area, thereby makes a number of devices (transformers, capacitors, STATCOMs, STATVARs, inverters, converters) redundant.
Most interestingly though, Faraday Exchangers are designed to collaborate with each other in the network to form the Faraday Grid and achieve systemic optimality. Think of it like the router for the Internet of Energy.
The Exchangers can be rolled out incrementally: using existing budget, system operators can choose to buy Exchangers in the place of aged transformers for a like-for-like cost. Therefore, the Faraday Grid can deliver its benefits without requiring additional investment, and gradually transform our electricity grid.
Recommended: Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We are working with a number of partners globally to showcase the wide variety of use-cases where the Faraday technology can add value. Our team is on a path for hypergrowth, going from roughly two-hundred this month to a thousand by the end of the year. We are planning to open further offices and Innovation Centres in our key markets, including more in mainland Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America.
Ultimately, these are measures to support our plan to unlock sustainable prosperity by making energy systems fundamentally better. We believe access to reliable, affordable, and clean energy from energy systems resilient enough to deal with our modern demands will have a truly transformative global impact.
Activate Social Media:
