Utility Week

22 | FEBRUARY 2023 | UTILITY WEEK Energy Download report Future energy networks: it's complicated A report from Utility Week and Salesforce looks at how energy networks of the future will have to manage extensive assets and markets while engaging customers more closely than ever. T he old network boundaries – gas or electricity, transmission or distribution – date back decades, but they mean very little to customers outside the energy bubble. Whether those customers are in the smallest household or the most energy- intensive industry, what they want is light, heat or cold, motive power, data transmis- sion and reliable energy for other uses. They are less interested in how those services are transmitted, whether it is by molecules or electrons, or through which pipe or wire. As the demands on our networks evolve and new providers and users enter the industry – will those old demarcations remain fixed? The interviewees for What Will the Energy Networks of the Future Look Like? – a new report by Utility Week, in association with Salesforce – said they saw changes both within and between networks. Paul Jewell, system development man- ager at National Grid Electricity Distribu- tion (NGED) – which re-branded from Western Power Distribution in September 2022 – agrees that the distinction is most important to insiders. He says: "You want to end up with no boundaries for the customer, so they can do what they want to do." Nevertheless, he adds: "The boundaries work, in that they nicely split out the differ- ent products. The experience of running an electricity network is different to the experi- ence of running a gas network. The transmis- sion and distribution split has historically worked." That said, these traditional boundaries are shiŒing. Jewell describes the experience at a distribution network: "When I started over 30 years ago I would have described the transmission network as an 'infinite bus' – we could do whatever we wanted on the distribution network and we would never break the transmission network because it was this big, powerful, centralised thing. But that is not the case now. First, because we are throwing more things at it in the form of generation and second, it has been taking off some of its transmission-connected carbon- hungry generation sources. So you see that balance changing as well as the way the combined grid operates." For Cadent Gas's head of energy transi- tion, David Watson, it is decarbonisation of the energy carried by the networks that is the likely cause of structural change: "The gas and electricity networks will look quite dif- ferent. I can see quite fundamental changes coming to the electricity networks, but for the gas networks, it is more a question of which bits of the network die away versus which bits of the networks you need to retain for hydro- gen gas." He adds: "Electricity networks are going to be different. We are already in the system where two-way and distribution-end generation is quite distributed." Meanwhile, third parties are shaking up the incumbents' certainties. It's oŒen over- looked, for example, that independent net- work operators – which are also regulated – provide by far the majority of new con- nections in residential developments, where they oŒen continue to own and operate local gas and electricity networks. They also provide industrial and com- mercial (I&C) connections and on-site net- works. Vattenfall's independent distribution network operator (DNO) arm specialises in the I&C sector and its business development manager, Suzanna Lashford, notes that "we can go up to the transmission network". She says: "We have not done any yet our- selves, but I think it creates a lot more value for the customer in the end, bypassing bits of network they don't need. So it is cheaper for them in the long run and that has to be a good thing for everybody." Will new investors and new types of investor be needed? Global Infrastructure Investor Association (GIIA) chief executive

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