Welcome to ResponsiveLoad
ResponsiveLoad is about innovative concepts and products to help us operate our electricity grids better; to get more from our use of electricity; and to enable the electricity supply industry to thrive in a low carbon world. We badly need such technologies. Our electricity supply industry grew up in a world unaware that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) can trigger the Climate Changes that we are beginning to see today. We have big ideas, and we hope sharing our ideas through this web site will help you understand and share our ambitions.
Our Technologies
Our flagship product, the ResponsiveLoad Controller, enables new fridges and similar products each to make a small contribution to the vital, second by second, balance of electricity grids. Together, there will be enough fridges and freezers to make a big difference, reducing our need for centralised high carbon generation and enhancing our security of supply. Such ResponsiveLoad will allow the grid to adapt more easily when a lot of renewables - "ambient" generation, such as wind, wave and solar generation - are operating. Indeed, ResponsiveLoad delivers a form of electricity storage. Our Concept pages explain more about how this works, and our patents.
Looking a little further ahead, our ResponsiveSubstation Controller gives more radical ways to manage the electricity infrastructure and control the flows of electricity across it. No longer need the grid be subject to the cascading blackouts that sometimes affect whole regions or countries (in 2003 the US Northeast, Italy, South London and parts of Sweden and Denmark faced expensive and painful blackouts.) Our Product pages give further detail.
Similar technology, when fitted to our household appliances, such as washing machines and dishwashers gives us ways to use electricity when it is cheapest. This helps us stabilise the grid, and make best use of our renewable generation. As we adopt small scale generation, from small scale rooftop wind turbines, domestic CHP or PV (see our glossary), we can trade our surplus with our neighbours. Our Neighbourhood Electricity Trading Schemes (NETS) pages explain more.
This Site
ResponsiveLoad has only just started on its mission towards a sustainable electricity industry. We have a long way to go and face some interesting challenges in a industry unused to disruption to its foundation technologies. Our Background pages explain more about the industry, its technology, how it works today, and its contribution to Climate Change. Our Strategy pages say more about how we hope and plan to move forward. About us explains a little more of our mission. News records the main events on this path. From Downloads, you can retrieve a growing range of papers and in-depth material publicly available and we are building a resource of useful Links, through which you can further explore the issues and background. Our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages explains our ideas from different perspectives.
Our Team page shows the foundations of the team that will carry this through but ResponsiveLoad also owes a lot to many colleagues and allies across industry, academia and government who have contributed ideas, criticisms, suggestions and their time. Although anonymous, our thanks go to all of them.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with ideas, suggestions, issues or proposals for working together. We look forward to a dialogue with people and organisations across the world.
Finally, please do contact us if you have problems with this web site. It is still quite new. We have worked hard to make it accessible (and are grateful to David Bill for this work). We have tried to make it complete, and will be extending it. During this evolution, there may be temporary blanks and lost links. Please forgive us, and let us know so we can fix the problems.