Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | DECEMBER 2021 | 15 Electricity ments and procuring for anchor and top-up services separately the objective is to encour- age more participants to market. These ser- vices will then need to be brought together to create fully functional end-to-end restoration services from DER. "That's what we're proposing. We con- ducted a test procurement event in the sum- mer to show how the service could work and how it could be procured. In terms of the procurement of the ser- vices, Chandler says there needs to be a lead procurement entity, which initially could be ESO. "But that lead procurement party would need some kind of service call-o€ contract in place and we're proposing that it's a three- way contract, between the lead procurement party, the generator, and the DNO. "Once the market has been created, we expect that it will naturally lead into a more renewable „ eet of generators." For the remaining duration of the project, Distributed ReStart will continue with live trials and report on those. The ‡ rst, in Gal- loway, could not have gone better. It used a small (13MVA connected to 11kV) hydro gen- erator as the anchor generator that managed to energise all the way up to the transmis- sion level voltage. The next trial will be in Chapelcross, again in the southwest of Scotland, and will use a 45MW biomass generator as an anchor. The third is in Redhouse, in Fife, and it will have a 11MVA battery energy storage system as its anchor – the ‡ rst time this has been attempted in Britain. Distributed ReStart will also look to connect wind farms to bring out- put from those into the power islands. Will the industry get behind it? Those who have contributed to the report are unanimous in their praise of what has been achieved within record time. But it was thought there was still some way to go before this process can become business as usual. Concerns include whether the Distributed ReStart protocols demonstrated in the pro- ject scenarios can be scaled up and applied in more urban situations. There is nervous- ness over communication protocols and, unsurprisingly, the elephant in the room – funding. Bless Kuri, head of transmission system planning and investment at Scottish and PET: Power System Studies – Part 1 31 July 2020 5 ALL: Final proposals 30 June 2022 10 PET: Outcomes Options Stage Report Completed Project Milestone 4 OST: Req Systems & Telecoms Part 1 Project Milestone 2 30 September 2021 Project Milestone PET: Demonstration of Black Start from DER 20 December 2021 Project Milestone 6 2019 2020 2021 2022 P&C: Functional requirements for P&C 8 November 2019 Project Milestone 7 P&C : A high level outline of commercial and regulatory arrangements Project Milestone 8 P&C: Final version of generic procurementterms 20 December 2021 Project Milestone 9 PMO: Project Managers Report Project Managers report PMO: Project Managers Report – Compulsory Project Managers report OST: Req Systems & Telecoms Part 2 4 December 2020 PET: Power Systems Studies Part 2 4 December 2020 PMO: Project Managers Report Compulsory Project Managers report OST: Viability assessment of capability to deliver 8 November 2019 Project Milestone 1 2 October 2020 31 December 2020 30 June 2021 Project Milestone Project Milestone 2 October 2020 31 December 2021 31 July 2019 OST & PET: Outcomes from build and testing of the DRZ -C 30 June 2022 28 February 2022 28 February 2022 3 OST: Refine the systems and telecoms Distributed restart time-line illustration Southern Electricity Networks, speaks for most other stakeholders interviewed for the report when he says: "Being able to do these things at lower levels, and demonstrating that it's possible technically to do it is a very big win. And if you have DER restoration plans available, then that can only improve the resilience of the network, or the ability to restore the network quickly. But it's work in progress." He adds, encouragingly: "I think there's signi‡ cant value in it and we need to con- tinue, especially given that there are a huge number of distributed generation sources coming on stream. To have invested in all these new resources like PVs and batteries and then potentially having people going without electricity because there's been a major incident, would be scandalous." Contributors to the report have called for the trial ‡ ndings to be extrapolated further, with suggestions that distribution networks should be running their own trials. Professor Nick Jenkins, leader of the Cen- tre for Integrated Energy Generation and Supply Research Group at Cardi€ University, who chairs the project's stakeholder advi- sory group, says: "There is a long way to go before it's business as usual. There are still major technical and communication issues, and also there is a need to establish a mar- ket-based mechanism. Putting that together in three years was always extraordinarily ambitious." • ŸTo download the full report, go to https:// utilityweek.co.uk/ready-for-low-carbon- restart/ in association with Taken from the report, Are We Ready to Roll Out Low Carbon Restart? Hydro power has been successfully used in a restart trial in Scotland

• Cover