Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | MAY 2023 | 27 Energy prises well but not those of critical national infrastruc- ture such as the energy system. A strong requirement for critical infrastructure is resilience. Market mechanisms do not value resilience sufficiently to deliver it at the level needed and the regulatory context does not require the telecommunications network operators to design and deploy a suitably resilient system. Moving forward There are four possible courses of action to address the need for communications systems to be considered as part of energy system transformation: • Option 1: Do nothing and rely on the communications sector's own direction of travel aligning with needs as they emerge. • Option 2: Do nothing and react with urgent measures when these are demanded. • Option 3: Deliver specific measures to address antici- pated requirements, accepting that these may not take a strategic or systematic perspective. • Option 4: Proactively evaluate the need in a strategic and systematic way, engaging with the right stake- holders to align interests and coordinate efforts; this will mean dependencies are identified and managed, and a coherent path that will serve the energy, digital and communications communities can be prepared. Option 1 and Option 2 cannot be relied upon to deliver desired outcomes, certainly not without sub- stantial and unquantifiable risk and excess cost. Both, however, are tempting because they might be justified by the apparent lack of requirements that would make another course of action clear. This is an illusion. The apparent dearth of clearly articulated require- ments is not that they are not present and emerging; it is that they are arising from a very complex, uncertain transformational process. Waiting for certainty will mean that it will be too late to act effectively. There are various activities and initiatives that could be described as being consistent with Option 3. Option 3 seeks to address needs that have the least uncertainty, but such efforts tend to focus on one aspect or issue and not take a system wide perspective. Option 4 will allow a strategic approach to be fol- lowed and address prioritisation, sequencing and the allocation of resources. Following Option 4 will permit Option 3 to happen with the benefit of allowing current efforts to be consolidated and applied to beneficial effect. Option 4 is needed if the energy system is to be optimised and if its transformation is to be supported in a timely manner. It effectively describes taking a systems approach with the benefit of a coherent strategy and a delivery plan. In any case, there is work that needs to happen to qualify the situation properly and develop a well- founded strategic, technical and business case for communications systems and capabilities to support and enable energy system transformation. This case will allow communications capability to take its place on the agenda and be part of the plan for energy system transformation. Substantial study by many across the energy com- munity has provided insight into what changes could be made to deliver a decarbonised energy system; these are well described in the Net Zero Strategy, British Energy Security Strategy and many other government, regulator and industry reports. However, there remains significant uncertainty about how to deliver it: the sequencing, the roles and responsibilities, the finance, commitment of resources, and other critical considerations. A strategic delivery plan is lacking. This is clearly expressed in the Climate Change Committee's (CCC's) delivering a reliable decarbonised power system report, the National Audit Office (NAO) report on decarbonising the power sector, the Hydrogen Champion report and in many other reports and articles. All of these make recommendations for addressing the urgent need for a strategically coherent delivery plan. In the absence of such a plan it is not possible to know and state system requirements with any reliable degree of certainty, including those requirements that relate to key dependencies such as digitalisation and in turn to communications systems and infrastructure. Even with such a plan, it must be capable of adaptation to allow it to respond to emerging change that will in turn, be reflected in identified and new dependencies. A great opportunity to act now There is an opportunity – and imperative – to act cre- ated by the clearly stated recommendations in the NAO, CCC and Hydrogen Champion reports. Communications systems should be included explicitly in the work that responds to these (and other) calls for a delivery plan for energy system transformation. This is effectively the approach to implementing Option 4. Lack of s plan today should not be seen as a justifica- tion to follow Option 1 or Option 2. This will only delay and increase the scale of the issue and the cost of the challenge. Communications systems must be built into the plan, and not leš to be added later as an ašer- thought. Next steps should include immediate actions to con- solidate current efforts and to help build the strategic, technical and business case that supports and responds to emerging requirements and the pursuit of net zero. The stakeholder community needs to be brought together to support this work and help ensure there is alignment of purpose. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ofgem, Ofcom, the National Infrastructure Commission, ENA, JRC, techUK, Smart DCC, communications network operators and supply chains are likely to be key players. The further opportunity is to include communica- tions systems within the mandate of the Future System Operator (FSO). This is not to suggest that the FSO takes ownership of communications policy or implementa- tion, but that it is required to coordinate the necessary efforts across the relevant stakeholders to ensure that communications systems are an enabler of energy sys- tem transformation and not a barrier. Eric Brown is a director of Grid Scientific and was senior figure at the Energy Systems Catapult

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