Dr Graham Ault, executive director at Smarter Grid Solutions
Like many who work in the clean energy sector, last month we eagerly awaited the release of the UK Government’s 10-point plan that would set the scene for our green recovery. And, while we welcome the roadmap towards achieving net zero for markets including wind and EVs, we believe more can be done to create a fully smart, clean energy system in the coming decade. More details are expected in the Energy White Paper released December 2020.
The plan set out by the Government outlines investment in renewables and innovation, with a particular focus on wind power and EVs. It also looks at the integral role hydrogen will play in the renewables mix and what will be needed to successfully capture carbon emissions in order to reach national carbon reduction targets. While these do provide a good stepping stone towards a cleaner energy system, we must look at how these individual parts connect into a single large, more flexible system that will evolve with fast moving supply and demand changes and challenges.
Increasing investment into renewables
One of the biggest targets set out in the plan is to produce enough offshore wind to power every home in the UK, quadrupling capacity to 40 gigawatts by 2030, and supporting up to 60,000 jobs. This marks a significant boost to the sector and builds momentum for a fully zero carbon grid.
However, renewables by nature are intermittent – the wind does not always blow, nor the sun always shine. It is promising to see targets set out which will see the electricity grid increasingly powered by large-scale renewable sources, but this needs to be taken one step further and fully integrate into the energy system to operate flexibly and cope with daily and seasonal variations. There are lots of tools that can facilitate that from flexibility markets, customer participation, attractive tariffs and digital-based smart-customer and smart-grid devices and systems, but the deployment of these needs to be vastly accelerated to support an ambitious clean energy transition.
Charging forward with EVs
The second-largest talking point from the plan is the target to phase out sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, accelerating the transition to electric vehicles and investing in grants to help buy cars and develop charge point infrastructure.
This is excellent news for air quality, the climate and the job market. From an energy system perspective, this is also the ideal opportunity to deliver the level of flexibility that is much needed. For example, when EVs are charged they can play into a bigger integrated energy system but also use home solar power or local clean energy resources closer to the point of production. Further integration of EVs into markets with better grid solutions and customer propositions, as well as more investment into the charging infrastructure is needed to advance digital EV charging solutions to be part of that overarching clean, smart, flexible grid.
The future of the energy system in the UK
Although these targets are a great building block for a green energy system, a big part of the picture was still missing within the Government’s plan.
The clean energy system of the future should be connected, developed and managed a lot more like the Internet. This concept is already being referred to by industry leaders as the ‘Internet of Energy’, meaning to automate the generation, consumption and management of energy to reduce waste and to solve delivery problems rapidly. This can be seen in action for some parts of the current system including the scalability, interconnectivity and the democratisation of energy.
Once this has been fully implemented, changes to any part of the system would be automatically integrated into the whole system to make sure it all works together, serving customers and the country with clean solutions, efficiently. Tackling these different strands of the energy transition together will make the customer experience seamless with all the intricate challenges hidden in the background, just like the Internet.
While this sounds complex, there are many benefits of making these system changes. Mainly, that the characteristics of each of the new technologies and system needs can be managed to deliver clean, economic, resilient, customer-focused outcomes. Many of the required technologies already exist but the work of connecting all the individual parts of the plan together into a single system that works for everyone is a significant challenge and needs to be tackled with a joined-up approach.
Finally, it is vital that we create compelling propositions for customers through flexible solutions targeted at much better options and outcomes. This trickles down from a decentralised and decarbonised energy system to enable new aspects of smart metering, flexibility markets, commercial arrangements and control over customer devices. When we have all of these components in place, net zero will be firmly within our sights.
