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Comment by heyyeah | Hacker News Reader

I'm working on a project for France to rollout virtual power plant flexibility with domestic electric heating. We get pressure to rapidly increase the rollout now. Let me know if you want to join us!

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I think your timing is great. Electricity is getting very cheap in Europe sometimes. Being able to hit this "sometimes" as often as possible, combined with reduced grid fees through load throttling, can make heat pumps economical.

If heat pumps become economical, it's a game changer.

Short summary here so people can understand why this is massive in France:

* (super summarized), France developped nuclear electricity back in the 70s. As a counterpart, Electric heaters were massively deployed

* Electric heaters were deployed with a technology named "fil pilote": when you change the phase, you can drive the target temperature https://www.vitahabitat.fr/blog/qu-est-ce-que-le-fil-pilote-...

* Unfortunatly, to drive the temperature, you need... something to drive it which was not deployed: you cannot plug a NEST and plugin in in a thermostat is complex

* In recent years, DIY based solutions based on Home Automation or Shelly were deployed by DIY communities but hey this require high skills & dedicated server (synology like), and sometime soldering. There is no plug and play solution on the market

* Heatzy.com proposed a wifi based solution but you can only do On/Off, not select a target temperature (so this is useless)

So having a single wifi small box to plug on the heater to drive the target temperature is a game changer

--> Since i'm looking at this market every years since 2013, it has not evolved until this post on hcknews! Very happy to see this solution coming! you made my day! (unfortunatly we're at the end of winter :))

I don't understand why you can't just have some wiki/bluetooth/RF/powerline module that turns your electric heater on and off depending on a signal from some random home automation controller?

"fil pilote" was probably useful in the 90s but it sounds outdated to me.

Hi heyyeah. It sounds interesting. I am now in Bordeaux and looking for software job or freelance missions in energy/environement sectors. Can we talk? My email is on my profile.

Sure, my colleague will email you. Our careers page is https://tiko.energy/careers/

This sounds awesome but I'm in the UK - how are you for mostly remote work with the occasional week in office? (I'm a DevOps person if that makes any difference)

That's fascinating, I haven't seen you on naturetech.io or climatebase.org, do you know a good way to find EU sustainability jobs and organisations?

You could also join energy & meteo systems, which I presume, powers this virtual power plant.

Yes! Daily meteo has a big impact on the domestic heating consumption

I meant the company https://www.energymeteo.com/ that, I presume, provides the technology behind your vpp

no, we have our own VPP

Ah, I think I missinterpreted the `EMS` part

Hey heyyeah I can't see your e-mail in your profile. Could you contact me ? Cheers !

my colleague will email you. Our careers page is https://tiko.energy/careers/ Cheers :)

Are you strictly EU based or do you have a presence in the USA?

At the moment EU but we have done some pilot projects in other regions (Australia)

I'm curious : what is virtual power plant flexibility ?

Virtual power plants are smart batteries in homes which in aggregate behave as a power plant, taking energy when it isn't in demand and supplying it when it is. It is a very strong contender for replacing gas power plants for peak load situations.

They can be more than that: https://www.emsysvpp.com/products/virtual_power_plant/techno...

Neat, TIL! Thanks

What is the project, I would like more details please.

Here is the customer site (in french): https://economie-chauffage-electrique.tiko.fr/ + our B2B site (in english) which explains a bit more the platform: https://tiko.energy/

Is it "simply" a cloud-connected pilot wire controller? I don't really see anything about what I understand about virtual power plants.

Also, why is a Linky meter necessary, shouldn't it work with any electricity meter?

On another note I don't understand how pilot wires aren't more widespread outside of France. I bought my radiators in France because I couldn't find here anything that would be easy to control, and anything controllable at all was 5 to 10 times as expensive.

I got it installed via engie less than a week ago. But I can only manage it through engie.

Do you know if I can manage it through my own Home Assistant instance?

no, sorry. just through the app or website for the moment. we're looking at this though.

It's a shot in the dark but... Erwan ?

https://tiko.fr (FR) https://tiko.energy/ (EN) we have our own branded product and we also white label with energy companies

After reading that page in its entirety, I still have no idea what this is.

  > Be an architect of the energy transition

OK, what do I do as an architect? If I'm not university trained, do I still qualify?

  > A unique Home Energy Management System

What is home energy management? Energy - electricity - comes into my house then straight to the fusebox. From there wires to the lights, the refrigerator, the air conditioner, the water heater. Each of those appliances I turn on when I want. Does energy management mean that this system manages when to turn them on?

I just installed it in my apartment in France, wonderful system.

old.reddit.com/r/france would probably be thrilled if you made a thread or an AMA

I don't get the enthusiasm. It's just the old IoT radiator controller. Am I missing something here?

Heh, I commented before reading, it seems it's simpler than I expected too

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