A new kind of local energy company, the Smart Local Energy Company (SLEC), will own and operate neighbourhood power grids that keep the financial value of energy within the community rather than sending it to distant corporations. The current energy economy funnels profits away from the places where electricity is actually used. REWIRE-NW tackles this by designing a system where local generation, storage, and consumption are balanced in real time, using 5G networks and data-driven software to manage supply and demand at the neighbourhood level. The project creates two new entities: a Mission-Oriented Local Energy Market (MOEM) that lets households and businesses trade energy locally, and an Intelligent Local Energy Architect (ILEA) that optimises the grid for both cost and carbon reduction. If successful, this framework could reshape how energy infrastructure is financed, regulated, and owned. Instead of a few large utilities controlling the system, public and community organisations would share ownership alongside commercial partners. The result would be lower energy costs, reduced carbon emissions, and local retention of the economic benefits that currently leak out of communities. The project does not build hardware—it builds the market rules, ownership structures, and digital architecture needed to make local energy systems viable at scale.
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Our economy, and in particular the energy economy is evolving fast. The day of the large international energy provider capturing and exporting local value is coming to an end, in future energy 'systems' are local, with the value of energy consumption created and retained locally through the use of emerging technologies and open markets with energy delivered to users through new consumer offering and business models, empowering all participants in the energy economy to get their fair share of the value creation. REWIRE-NW takes a revolutionary mission-oriented approach to the Smart Local Energy System (SLES) proposition through its combination of the SLES framework and its focus on community and local benefit and value retention, its core objective being the creation of an energy system that is not only optimised and balanced at the local level in energy terms, but also in terms of welfare and benefit of all of its stakeholders. Through the SLES framework REWIRE-NW will propose new market arrangements that pave the way for change. New structures and procedures in the form of the intelligent 5G enhanced Mission-Oriented Local Energy Market (MOEM) and data-centric Intelligent Local Energy Architect (ILEA) operated under a new entity, the Smart Local Energy Company (SLEC) will drive the system towards a lower cost and lower carbon outcome. The definition of these new entities will be established, but their objective will be locally focussed and impact driven from the start. Change will require an evolution in regulation and a revolution in approaches to finance and ownership. Local is at the heart of REWIRE-NW and the benefits of an increased role for the public and community sector alongside commercial ownership will be realised. REWIRE-NW sees this future as a key opportunity to redefine the role of community in energy and design a system that priorities local social and economic objectives. If value is created locally it should be distributed locally.
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