Energy Systems Catapult chair, Nick Winser, was appointed as Electricity Networks Commissioner in July 2022 by Rt Hon Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and tasked with providing advice to Government on how to reduce the time it takes to deliver transmission infrastructure in Britain.

The challenge was that the electricity transmission network requires upgrading and expanding to connect renewable generation and support decarbonisation. It currently takes up to 14 years to build new transmission infrastructure. The objective was to identify and recommend areas where the end-to-end delivery process could be shortened by 3 years, and ideally by half.

The Commissioner was supported by a detailed companion report by Energy Systems, including:

• Mapping the end-to-end process using a System Engineering approach.
• Identifying 8 key challenge themes where time could potentially be saved.
• Engaging with over 200 stakeholders from 15 organisations, including Governments, Transmission Owners and Ofgem to identify and refine options for process change.

The Commissioner final report with 18 recommendations, supported by the Catapult companion report, found:

• Current timescales of 12-14 years for building new electricity transmission lines can be reduced to seven years to help deliver energy security and Net Zero.
• It was vital that clean, secure, affordable electricity from 50GW of new wind and 24GW of new nuclear must reach homes and businesses.
• “Open, transparent and efficient” engagement with communities and people about impact of new transmission infrastructure is key.

Energy Systems Catapult collaborated with UK Power Networks (UKPN) under Network Innovation Allowance funding to investigate the behaviour of domestic electricity consumers and the distribution network supplying them under a Cold Start scenario in 2030.

With electrification of heating and transport expected to be at far higher level in the next decade, an extended power outage under severe weather conditions would lead to a sudden demand surge to levels far higher than normal peak levels as electrical devices are reactivated.

Using an innovative Dynamic Energy Systems Simulation tool, our Systems Engineering team created dynamic models using a portion of real electricity network to understand the physical impacts of fault conditions on energy assets and appliances within the network under different outage scenarios. A range of metrics were produced, including power flows, voltages, loading and balancing.

The results will allow UKPN to identify:

• Network areas with high risk of adverse effects from power restoration after Cold Start.
• Mitigation measures such as operational policies, network controls, demand-side flexibility and conventional reinforcement.
• Explore novel mitigation methods based on in-home appliance flexibility.

The Milford Haven: Energy Kingdom (MH:EK) project is focused on developing diverse, local markets to support the transition to hydrogen and renewables for the major energy infrastructure cluster along the Milford Haven Waterway in Wales.

Large scale hydrogen markets could provide an essential cross-vector system balancing and inter-seasonal energy storage for an energy system dominated by the UK’s abundant renewables, especially offshore wind and marine resources. This gas to hydrogen transition may be built out from the UK’s critical natural gas infrastructure.

As the UK’s largest energy port, Milford Haven is an industrial cluster that can handle 30% of total UK gas demand. Facilities include South Hook Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal, Dragon LNG terminal, RWE’s 2.2GW gas-fired power plant, and National Grid’s pipeline that connects the Milford Haven Waterway with other assets like Grain LNG terminal, in Kent, and St Fergus gas terminal, Aberdeenshire.

MH is also home to Europe’s largest gas power station powering 3.5 million homes and businesses, with ambitions to build 90MW of floating offshore wind, it supports 5,000 jobs and injects £324m to the Pembrokeshire economy.

MH:EK Detailed Design was an initial two-year deliverable exploring what a decarbonised smart local energy system could look like for Milford Haven, Pembroke and Pembroke Dock.

Energy Systems Catapult Systems Engineering team investigated local renewable energy, including solar, onshore wind, future offshore wind and biomass for decarbonised gas transition; diversified seed markets for hydrogen across buildings, transport and industry; consumer trials of fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen-ready heating systems.

Central to the project, and to achieving Net Zero, was a commitment to engage with the community and local industry – covering energy generation and storage, transport, import, export and right through to end users – providing insight and opportunities for growth.

The Cost Reflective Pricing project investigated whether or not the fixed costs on energy bills – for network, environmental and social costs – are efficiently distributed between the standing charge and unit (per kWh) price of electricity and gas tariffs.

With these fixed costs currently recovered from the unit price, this means consumers that use more energy will pay more for the same fixed costs.

The study found that overall consumers are:

• Under-charged for the fixed costs of making energy supply available and over-charged for the units of energy they consume;
• Consumers with household generation technologies (such as solar PV) will buy fewer units of energy from the grid, so under-paid their fair share of fixed costs. Which must then be recovered in the bills of other consumers, including those in fuel poverty, increasing others energy bills.
• Consumers with household demand technologies (such as heat pumps) will buy more units of energy from the grid, so over-paid their fair share of fixed costs recovered in the unit price.

The Cost Reflective Pricing study found that rebalancing fixed and volumetric charges into the standing and unit prices respectively and moving environmental and social costs to general taxation, would more recover fixed costs more efficiently. As a result, the marginal cost of operating a heat pump would be lower than a gas boiler.

Following this study, Ofgem made some initial changes to charging consistent with the argument that network charges should have a larger fixed component and a smaller per kWh charge.