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NETWORK / 11 / SEPTEMBER 2019 Toby Ferenczi, director of strategy at Kaluza, refl ects on the recent blackout incident and provides his vision of a home-powered, decentralised grid that could be more resilient to these events. In an unassuming offi ce building down a deliberately unmarked turning on the outskirts of Wokingham, a small team of people hold the country in their hands. National Grid's National Control Centre, a cavernous room with a giant screen showing the status of the UK's high voltage power lines (think NASA Mission Control but with less high fi ving), has ultimate responsibility for keeping Britain's electricity network running 24/7. As a result, success for the people who work there is to not be noticed. Increasingly, the Electricity System Operator (or ESO, the part of National Grid that runs the control centre), is playing an important role in the transition to a zero- carbon energy system. This is because one of the biggest challenges with decarbonisation is how to keep the electricity grid stable as more and more of our energy comes from renewables. Whilst renewable energy is now extremely cheap, cheaper even than fossil fuel power plants, unfortunately we can't turn the sun and wind on and off to meet fl uctuating demand. This means that we need to fi nd new ways to keep the grid in balance. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of means at our disposal to either store energy or adjust our energy demand to meet fl uctuations in supply (called 'demand response') through our smart devices at home. Domestic batteries are one of the most prominent examples of this and their cost is falling at a blistering pace. Not to mention the huge uptake in electric cars we will see in the next two decades, which in effect, have the potential to form a giant battery for the grid. The ESO spends around £2 billion a year paying companies to help them meet imbalances in supply and demand, called 'grid balancing services'. Usually these payments go to fast-acting gas turbines that can ramp up and down quickly, but increasingly batteries and demand response devices including electric car charge points and smart heaters in people's homes are being drawn upon to help manage the grid. Deciding how the grid will be balanced has a huge infl uence on how our grid will look in the future. The ESO therefore has dual responsibility for keeping the lights on every second, and for facilitating our target to become a net-zero society by 2050. It's hard to think of a single organisation that has two such critical, yet potentially confl icting, goals. On Friday 9 August 2019, a lightning strike and the sudden loss of two large electricity generators caused a major power outage affecting more than one million people. Thankfully, on this occasion the ESO's defence mechanisms kicked in correctly, with some types of storage responding in under a second to help stabilise the system. One defence mechanism was to temporarily cut supply to certain regions which is what caused the disruption. By coincidence, summer storms meant the UK's wind farms were operating at near full capacity. The more wind energy on the system, the less 'inertia' coming from traditional power stations which have large, heavy rotating turbines. Whilst wind energy was not the cause of the issue, this lack of inertia arguably made things harder to deal with than they would otherwise have been. New, cheaper distributed technology is changing the game. Several studies, such as one published by OVO and Imperial College last year ('How residential fl exibility is key to decarbonising power, heat and transport'), have shown that by using batteries and smart controls, a grid powered by over 90 per cent renewables with high levels of electric vehicles and electric heating, is not only possible, but would in fact be cheaper to run than today's energy system. Energy storage and demand response may eventually make the grid more reliable and resilient than today, even with a rapid expansion in renewables. Getting from where we are today, to the system of the future, will require rapid change. To have any hope of meeting our climate change obligations, the UK government must preside over a mass roll- out of solar and wind, electric vehicles, and electric heating. Dramatically decarbonising electricity generation, and in parallel electrifying everything from cars to heating, is now accepted as the most practical way to achieve our 2050 climate goals. Imagine a smart, fl exible energy system where millions of electric vehicles and appliances are connected and responding intelligently to match the supply of renewables. Even better, imagine an energy system in which customers get paid for providing this smart fl exibility, thereby reducing their energy bills. There is no reason to think that the ESO won't be able to deliver the energy transition whilst keeping the grid stable, and I'm sure that after the recent power outage, greater protections will be put in place for core infrastructure like rail networks. It is time however, to question the ingrained wisdom that anything that poses a risk to uninterrupted access to power, however small, is unacceptable. Preserving the habitability of our planet will require some big changes to our energy system, let's make sure we embrace the new technologies that will make our grid stronger in the process. can't turn the sun and wind on and off to to think of a single organisation that has two such critical, yet potentially confl icting, goals. On Friday 9 August 2019, a lightning strike and the sudden loss of two large electricity generators caused a major power outage affecting more than one million people. Thankfully, on this occasion the ESO's defence mechanisms kicked in correctly, with some types of storage responding in under a second to help stabilise the system. One defence mechanism was to temporarily cut supply to certain regions which is what caused the disruption. By coincidence, summer storms meant the UK's wind farms were operating at near full capacity. The more wind energy on the system, the less 'inertia' coming from traditional power stations which have large, heavy rotating turbines. Whilst wind energy was not the cause of the issue, this lack of inertia arguably made things harder to deal with than they would otherwise have been. New, cheaper distributed technology is changing the game. Several studies, such as one published by OVO and Imperial College last year (' fl exibility is key to decarbonising power, heat and transport' using batteries and smart controls, a "There is no reason to think that the ESO won't be able to deliver the energy transition whilst keeping the grid stable, and I'm sure that after the recent power outage, greater protections will be put in place for core infrastructure like rail networks." For breaking news and further industry reaction on the blackout incident visit www.networks.online Making the energy system resilient by design