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18 | 18TH - 24TH SEPTEMBER 2015 | UTILITY WEEK Operations & Assets Analysis O fgem's Low Carbon Networks Fund (LCNF) came to an end in March this year and was replaced by the Network Innovation Competition and the Network Innovation Allowance as part of the new RIIO-ED1 regulatory regime. Many of the projects funded by the LCNF are now reaching completion, with UK Power Networks recently announcing that it had delivered both Low Carbon London and Flexible Plug and Play on time and significantly under budget. The regulator introduced the LCNF in 2010 as part of the five-year price set- tlement agreed that year, allowing up to £500 million to support projects spon- sored by the electricity distribution net- work operators to try out new technology, and operating and commercial arrange- ments, with the aim of providing security of supply at value for money as the UK moves to a low-carbon economy. But have they been successful? And how will the results be used? Here, Util- ity Week takes a closer look at some of the LCNF-funded projects undertaken by the DNOs. DNO low-carbon projects With the ending of the Low Carbon Networks Fund and the maturity of many of the projects it financed, now is a good time to assess whether they worked as intended. By Lois Vallely. Project length: four years Status: complete Estimated cost: £28 million Funding from LCNF: £21.7 million Actual cost: £14.9 million UK Power Networks (UKPN) embarked on the Low Carbon London project to plan for future energy demand and look at how to accommodate technologies, such as smart meters, electric vehicles and decentralised generation, which would be deployed to help London meet its carbon reduction tar- get of 60 per cent by 2025. The project trialled smart grid technolo- gies and new commercial arrangements, both with business and domestic customers. It also looked at ways of accommodating the anticipated growth in decentralised genera- tion, as well as managing higher demand for electricity created by the switch to electric cars and heat pumps. Low Carbon London will be used to pro- vide information for urban DNOs to better enable the uptake of home and workplace electric vehicle charging, support the increase in combined heat and power plants in urban areas, and facilitate home electric heating and micro-generation uptake. The project also demonstrated that improvements can be made by support- ing these changes in a smart or optimised way, as opposed to building new network infrastructure. Head of future networks Martin Wilcox says: "There are clear reasons why we did this trial, which is about supporting the country as we try to reduce carbon emis- sions. We were trying to find out how flexible people could be in the way they use electric- ity to see if this can make better use of inter- mittent renewable energy and reduce short peaks on the electricity network, keeping down the costs of delivering electricity for consumers." Project length: three years Status: due for completion this month Estimated cost: £6.4 million Funding from LCNF: £3.6 million The aim of Scottish Power Energy Net- works' (SPEN's) Flexible Networks project is to provide a 20 per cent increase in net- work capacity through innovative meas- ures, enabling more customers to make the transition to low-carbon generation and demand-response technologies. Future networks lead engineer Kevin Smith says: "The essence of the project is looking at trying different things on the net- work – we call them interventions – which are different from business-as-usual solu- tions, for when there is increased load or increased demand for generation. "The normal solution would be to rein- force the network with new cables, lines, substations and transformers. We were ask- ing, what else could we do differently?" SPEN looked at four techniques that could circumvent the need for network reinforcement: • flexible network control – 9 per cent of peak load can be redistributed on the net- work at appropriate times; • dynamic rating – a possible 7 per cent increase in capacity; • voltage optimisation – a 2 per cent reduc- tion in demand by reducing voltage where appropriate; • energy efficiency – a 2 per cent reduction by reducing overall demand. The objective is to demonstrate how these techniques can release capacity on the high-voltage network, allowing greater take-up of low-carbon technologies without the need for traditional network reinforce- ment. The project also hopes to encourage specific industrial and commercial custom- ers to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings so as to reduce their demand for electricity. The specific issues facing SPEN are mir- rored across the UK electricity distribution network, and this project will be able to provide generic solutions and recommenda- tions to other DNOs to address these. Scottish Power Energy Networks: Flexible Networks UK Power Networks: Low Carbon London