CityVerve is based around the large-scale deployment of technologies, where everyday objects can be connected to a network in order to share data. This approach will demonstrate and evidence the benefits to citizens’ through environmental improvements, economic opportunities, and the more efficient and effective delivery of services such as transport, healthcare and energy. It will provide the ability to create new services and operating models through the interoperability between transport, healthcare and energy systems. The geographical focus of CityVerve will be Greater Manchester; a city region which has been at the forefront of the city devolution agenda, in particular health and social care provision, leading the way in designing new ways of delivering services and providing the blueprint for other cities in the UK and beyond. CityVerve will build on these opportunities to provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform healthcare and other city services around the needs of people, not only is this is an urgent priority for Greater Manchester, but a challenge faced by many global cities.

The Ebbs and Flows of Energy Systems (EFES) project looks to develop a grid balancing platform to provide electrical support to the national grid during peak energy demand times, such as evenings. The project will achieve this through development of a virtual power plant (VPP), a cloud based 'power plant', capable of utilising dispirate electricity storage assets through a software package and controlled by utility providers. Supporting technology will also be developed through this project, including; a building energy management system (BEMS) for domestic and commercial building control functionality to support the VPP, domestic battery storage (BS) to store electricity during low tariff times for re-distribution during peak demand and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electric vehicle (EV) charging capability to enable EVs to act as a battery store. The VPP will use current and historical consumer data to caculate the available battery provision to the national grid. The result of this support is a reduced requirement for rapid response services in the way of fossil fuel power plants, generating both a economic and environmental savings.