London South Bank University and PB Design and Developments Limited KTP 24_25 R2

A single Smart Power Hub will learn to juggle electricity from the grid, solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicle chargers at the same time. Most homes and businesses with solar panels or batteries still treat each energy source as a separate device. The grid sees a chaotic mix of unpredictable exports and sudden demands. This project builds a control system that coordinates all those sources as one intelligent unit, deciding in real time whether to pull from the grid, store energy, or feed power back. The company, PB Design and Developments, currently lacks the advanced power electronics expertise to build such a system. The grant embeds that expertise from London South Bank University directly into the company’s engineering team. If the hub works, it could let a single building act as a mini power station—smoothing out the peaks and troughs that make renewable energy hard to manage. That matters for the wider grid because fewer sudden surges mean less need for expensive backup fossil-fuel plants. The project is squarely applied: the goal is a commercial product that helps the company expand into the Net Zero energy market, not a fundamental scientific discovery.