Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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32 | NOVEMBER 2020 | UTILITY WEEK Operational Excellence Companies across the utilities sector continue to demonstrate agility and a willingness to innovate in response to Covid-19. Here are some high- lights from the coverage in our Opera- tional Excellence hub over the past month: Water 'centre of excellence' due in Spring Transformational change has been promised by the water sector as part of its 2050 Innovation Strategy, which will see a centre of excellence hub for sharing innovative practices come to life from spring next year. The strategy, developed by water companies together with the UK Water Industry Research and engineering consultancy Arup, sets a vision to deliver value for consumers and the environ- ment. https://utilityweek.co.uk/water-centre-of- excellence-due-in-spring/ DNOs open 'one stop shop' for flex- ibility Four DNOs will from now on operate all of their flexibility tenders through a single, joint website. The Flexible Power website, which was already in use aer being developed by Western Power Distribution as part of an innovation project, allows flex- ibility providers to view the locations of networks constraints, the associated requirements, procurement notices and documentation. https://utilityweek.co.uk/dnos-open-one- stop-shop-for-flexibility/ Thames uses innovative repair tech- nique for 'most complex' burst pipe Thames Water has shared details of an innovative technique it used to repair a pipe by sending engineers inside the pipe instead of patching the 90cm burst. The work on the pipe, located eight metres below Southwark Underground station, was one of the most complex repairs the company has undertaken to a transfer main. To get the work done, engineers crawled into the pipe to re-line it with pre-cast stainless steel sections using hand tools. https://utilityweek.co.uk/thames-uses- innovative-repair-technique-for-most- complex-burst-pipe/ Op Ex Round-up Analysis Should smart meters be emergency brakes? As electric vehicles proliferate, home charge points risk overloading local networks, so why not use smart meters to turn them on and off? Tom Grimwood reports. I n probably one of the oddest shareholder meetings ever conducted by a multi- billion-dollar corporation, Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk set out plans last month to lower the per-megawatt-hour cost of its batteries by more than half over the next three years. With investors sat in rows of the compa- ny's cars and honking by way of applause, Musk explained how this cost saving and others would allow the carmaker to sell a new model with a price tag of just $25,000 – putting it on par with its internal combustion engine rivals. However, the imminent arrival of this long-anticipated tipping point for EVs is a big concern for networks, who fear being caught out by a sudden surge in demand. Scottish and Southern Electricity Net- works (SSEN) was so worried that back in July it submitted a pair of modifications to the Distribution Connection and Use of System Agreement (DCUSA) and the Smart Energy Code that would allow distribution network operators (DNOs) to use the smart meter infrastructure to limit power supplies to customers as a last resort if the local net- work was at risk of being overloaded. Explaining its motivation in the proposal document for the DCUSA modification, SSEN said Britain's electricity networks were not designed to cope with the demands of low- carbon technologies such as EV chargers and heat pumps. It acknowledged the role flexibility ser- vices could play in helping to reduce the