SIF awards to power next stage of innovation projects

Two of our innovation projects supporting the decarbonisation of rural communities and the construction industry have secured new funding from Ofgem.

The Rural Energy and Community Heat (REACH) and Road to Power projects have been given nearly £1 million through the Strategic Innovation Fund, an Ofgem programme managed in partnership with Innovate UK. This will enable both to move from discovery to alpha phases over the next six months.

REACH aims to address the difficulties in supplying adequate electrical capacity to support the take-up of low carbon technologies in isolated areas.

The new funding will enable engineers to refine previous design work for shipping container-sized rural energy centres. These will have standardised equipment that can be easily sited within communities to enable the connection of heat pumps, electric vehicle chargers and renewable generation.

The prefabricated modular centres aim to speed-up decarbonisation in country areas where reinforcement options can be costly and time-consuming. The design refinements will focus on the techno-economic aspects to ensure effective and efficient energy solutions.

The SIF money will also support work to help communities understand their decarbonisation options and will include creating the architecture for a community guidance tool to interpret techno-economic data and make cost-effective choices.

The tool will assist communities through the process of determining their requirements and will produce indicative carbon reduction metrics, physical install requirements, project costs and other key data.

NGED Innovation and Deployment Engineer Laurence Hunter said: “During conversations with communities in the discovery phase, it became clear there was significant interest in this project underlining strong desires to decarbonise.

“But the need for guidance was also high, reflecting the different stages communities are at. Communities are looking for help with what combinations of technologies will be suitable for their contexts, the best place to site those technologies, how to engage with landowners and what ownership and governance structures should be adopted. Developing this tool aims to address this.”

Road to Power seeks to support the growing use of electricity to power road and other construction equipment.

We estimate electric-powered big plant machinery, such as excavators and road rollers, will lead to a surge in demand for temporary connections on our network by 2050.

Road to Power aims to support this rise through modelling increased demand and introducing a self-service connection tool that provides estimates for interruptible and flexible temporary connections, in addition to the standard approach.

The project will work closely with key stakeholders in the construction industry to create a solution that meets their future energy requirements.

Project Manager Fiona Fulton said: “Construction schemes are prime candidates for these types of connections as they have a variable but predictable load across the day.

“Flexible and interruptible connections agreements could make it possible for some temporary connections to take place without waiting for reinforcement work that would otherwise be required. This is good news for those construction companies who can get to work sooner. The self-serve tool should also make it easier and faster to get temporary connection estimates which will also speed-up the process as well as providing a wider range of options to choose from.”

Harnessing technological innovation and collaborative working is an increasing priority for National Grid as we transform our transmission and distribution networks to enable the transition to a clean and affordable energy future.