About Hazelmead
Hazelmead is a community energy site in Bridport, Dorset — 54 homes on a shared microgrid, with solar panels across the roofs and a 1.6 MWh community battery at the edge of the site. The homes trade as one neighbourhood: solar serves the homes first, whatever is spare charges the battery or is sold to the grid, and in the evening the battery takes over.
Behind the site sits the Flux service, which gives Hazelmead access to the energy markets — live prices and the site's expected demand. On site, the edge controller solves a fresh plan every ten minutes against the local Tesla battery and steers it second by second. The outcome is optimised energy flows across the neighbourhood, and optimised costs for the residents.
Price forecasts developed in real time
UK electricity is traded in half-hour blocks, and the price of each block moves with the weather, the wind, and the country's demand — cheap in the small hours, expensive at the evening peak. The Flux service watches these markets for Hazelmead: it combines several market sources — variable rates and flexibility prices — into a single forward price forecast, and the battery is optimised against it. Buy the cheap half-hours, sell the expensive ones.
Optimises and drives battery dispatch
Three rhythms run the battery. Every 4 seconds, the edge controller checks the battery and keeps the command inside the site's safety limits. Every 10 minutes, it builds a fresh 24-hour plan from forward prices and expected site demand, and sends it to the optimiser — the LP solver. And the prices themselves arrive in 30-minute settlement periods, the heartbeat of the UK market.
The last 7 days — or 30
Every kilowatt-hour that moved through Hazelmead, split into its seven flows — and what the battery's trading earned. Pick the window; the ribbons are the real energies the site recorded, and the bars beneath are each day's costs, revenues and net.