Delivering clean, reliable and affordable power for homes and businesses
The energy system of the near future will be vastly more complex than that which came before. The system we are moving to will source power from a myriad of places, from rooftop solar panels to wind turbines in the North Sea, to serve a complex landscape of electric vehicles, heat pumps and electrified industrial plants. Power will move in multiple directions at once, changing dynamically in response to factors as diverse as weather conditions and the choices of millions of users.
Huge effort is going into new energy generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure, but making the future system work as a whole is just as important. Many of the biggest risks around the transformation lie in this ability to connect and integrate parts of the system in a secure and resilient way. Such integration is necessary to meet society’s needs affordably and reliably, and to drive innovation, productivity and economic growth.
The need for digitalisation
Such a system must be digitally enabled, with the exchange of data, enabled by appropriate software and hardware, helping system and network operators to see across the system in real time and co-ordinate rapid action to manage it. Doing so will empower people and communities to manage their energy needs in ways that minimise their costs. A digitalised system can shift power into storage when generation exceeds demand, or incentivise different patterns of demand, with consumer appliances and commercial facilities reacting seamlessly to buy power when it is most cost effective without cumbersome manual intervention. All this can keep system costs down, reduce consumer bills, and ensure the necessary resilience and security.
Delivering an integrated electricity system is a whole-system challenge touching every part of society, and a different proposition from business as-usual policy implementation. We know from past experiences of infrastructure delivery that success relies on clear overall governance, co-ordinating architecture and accountability, with particular attention to how things work together. We also know that these projects do not happen without the requisite engineering and technical skills, which are simply not in place for the scale of the task we are attempting.
Worryingly, for all the progress that has been made to accelerate change, the pace of digitalisation is insufficient, and we do not yet have the co-ordination and strategic oversight needed to deliver a truly integrated system. Government is making a good start on digitalisation, but we are not where we need to be. Without senior and influential oversight in government able to ensure that digitalisation is built into all aspects of the transformation, we risk the development of multiple incompatible systems, technical divergence, cyber security risks and rising costs. Urgent, sustained and substantial effort is needed now or we risk locking ourselves into a system which costs more to build, is less reliable, and results in higher bills than necessary.
How the Academy and NEPC can help
The Academy and NEPC are providing advice to government to support them in meeting this challenge. Arguably the biggest strategic challenge to achieving clean, resilient and affordable energy from an engineering perspective is integrating millions of assets across a far more dynamic system. Digitalisation is a gap that must be urgently addressed if this is to be achieved. As such, our report on the critical role of digitalisation in enabling Clean Power 2030 and beyond makes the value case for digitalisation of the system, details the function it must play if we are to get the new electricity system we need, and sets out the actions required to put it in place. Further work will focus on engineering delivery for complex system transformation and what is still needed to manage the delivery of a fully integrated, resilient and affordable system.