Regional Energy Systems Operator (RESO) project

Objective(s)

This is a partnership project funded by UKRI, bringing together key infrastructure stakeholders and energy innovator organisations including WPD, Cadent, Energy Capital, Transport for the West Midlands and Coventry City Council. Our objectives are to:

1. Design a smart local energy system for the city of Coventry, specifying an energy infrastructure vision for the city, suitable to meet future energy demands for power, heat and transport up to 2050
2. Set out an operating model for this design
3. Demonstrate the institutional and organisational framework necessary to secure and support the long-term investment required.

Problem(s)

Coventry is committed to the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and as a region supporting the 2041 net zero targets as part of the West Midlands Combined Authority.

In order to drive synergy benefits from the whole energy system, RESO is bringing together the parties to understand how we can work together to deliver value for both energy customers and the city. The concept is that this will be achieved through more collaborative control and planning at a local level, enabling us to tailor local energy infrastructure at an optimised level for the city.

Method(s)

The RESO project is responding to local study findings that show that at a city level, there is significant value in improving coordination of activity across all aspects of energy to create the best outcome for the city.

The project takes a systematic approach to design thinking based on five key principles;

1. Define
2. Explore
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Evaluate/Validate

Partners take a co-creation approach to the project which has eight workstreams, each with their own workstream lead;

1. Stakeholder engagement (Coventry City Council)
2. Data (University of Birmingham)
3. Smart Local Market Design (Electron)
4. Energy Infrastructure Design (Enzen)
5. Design validation (University of Warwick)
6. Governance and institutional design (Energy Capital)
7. Finance and Investment (Enzen)
8. Project Management (Enzen)

Our proposed RESO design will include local low carbon energy generation, storage and management and will integrate future mobility assets such as electric vehicles into its overall envelope. This approach moves us away from the more traditional method of infrastructure reinforcement, towards using innovative technology to develop a smart local energy system

• Scope

  The West Midlands Regional Energy System Operator (RESO) project looks to explore the advantages of the development of smart local energy systems and examines the operating model at the city-scale of Coventry. However, to ensure that it is replicable and scalable to other areas across the UK, it also focuses on the institutional capacity and governance mechanisms needed to enable the role out of smart local energy systems as a key part of the wider national energy system.

• Success criteria

  The project’s goal is to demonstrate the value of smart local energy systems as part of the solution to achieving national and local net zero ambitions and achieve a design and institutional set up which delivers at the lowest cost to users. Through RESO we will;

  • Demonstrate the value of an institutional and organisation structure integrated with markets and a SLES to optimise energy and decarbonisation outcomes for Coventry
  • Provide a design that reduces carbon to 75-84% on 2019 baseline by 2032
  • Demonstrate a 25% savings to customers
  • Leverage significant investment for RESO
• Potential for new learning

  The unique contribution of our project for WPD’s customers, the citizens of Coventry and the UK is to bring a scalable and replicable, whole city perspective to achieving net zero across electricity, gas and transport fuels, identifying the markets that this could open up and the governance mechanisms which would be needed to enable this.