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NETWORK / 9 / JULY/AUGUST 2016 Many believe that allowing haphazard development of systems without an overall plan is no longer practical. The Future Power Systems Architect Project undertaken by the Energy Systems Catapult and the Institute of Engineering and Technology will publish its findings later this month. Whitehead says a body able to take a "much more panoptic view of all the various articulated parts of the system is potentially a very attractive proposition" as we enter a period of "bad news and consequences of things we have done or not done previously". A systems architect, Whitehead muses, could help decision makers resist the temptation to shoot the UK in the foot in the long term in the pursuit of short-term cost- saving decisions such as cutting support for solar and onshore wind. "We can't go back to a whole pile of central generating plants," Whitehead is exasperated, "and yet people are talking as if we could, and are proposing systems as if the thing hadn't really changed and we could just get on with business as usual and it will all work out." Green gas One area Whitehead says is in dire need of a long-term systemic plan is heat. Heat has been subject to vast swings in policy over recent years, with the once-held vision of the full electrification of heat now largely abandoned in favour of a mixture of electrification, district heating and repurposing the gas grids. While an architect able to formulate a plan, identify pinch points, but ultimately commit to the long-term vision would be very beneficial, Whitehead says, it would not be without its problems. The body would need to have a high degree of political consensus and agreement on what it looked at, and what was politically immovable as a result. Whitehead's own preferred solution to the question of heat is green gas and closer integration of energy and waste. "I don't share the confidence of some that there is going to be a fracking bonanza of a whole pile of gas coming into the system from liberating it, with great cost, from rocks," he says. He is unconvinced that the UK will be able to follow in the footsteps of America and have a substantial shale gas industry without "pretty much despoiling two parts of the country with fracking wells and pads". Shale is not a switch solution, he says. Green gas, such as biomethane and hydrogen, is a more reliable bet, Whitehead reasons, because "by and large people continue to throw their waste away, things continue to grow, and cows continue to do what they do". Viable sources include farm waste, sewage and forest trimmings. "Greening the gas system as it is seems a much better proposition and also maintains gas networks, boilers and the system of doing things that people are used to now. It seems a much more accessible way of doing things." But at the moment the two sectors are "barely touching" and we are not "remotely near integrating" energy from waste processes into the energy system. First in the queue for attention should be bringing regulation in each sector into line. This is clearly a subject Whitehead feels passionately about, and he needs little encouragement to voice his thoughts. If integration could be achieved, Whitehead foresees enormous potential benefits for the UK's energy security, cutting down the volume of gas imported in the future as our own indigenous North Sea stock begins to run dry. Gas is expected to play a substantial role in energy generation for a very long time, but will not be able to carry on unabated for very long. Whitehead therefore brands the abandonment of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) project by the government last year as "catastrophic", in effect ruling out the long-term contribution of gas to the system. System operation While support for CCS and other aspects of smart grids may have been lacking from Decc - certainly in Whitehead's eyes, energy secretary Amber Rudd has set wheels in motion for the governing framework that future will need. Alongside commissioning the systems architect study, Decc has turned its eyes to National Grid and its role as System Operator. National Grid wears many hats. As well as being the SO , it administers the capacity market, owns interconnections and runs its gas networks. For some, the potential for conflicts of interest between all these different roles - a topic for speculation for years - has become too great. National Grid's ownership of interconnectors in particular is seen be some as prone to manipulation. As the use of interconnectors for system balancing increases, they argue, Grid is bound to end up favouring its own assets. No wrongdoing by National Grid has been uncovered despite several investigations and Ofgem is still confident any conflicts can be managed "at the moment". National Grid itself is adamant it can continue, but opinions on the best future course of action have lately severely diverged. The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) was clear in its Smart Power report that creating an independent SO, while preferable in the long term, need not be an immediate priority. But the Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) thinks differently. In June it le˜ no doubt, saying "the time is now" for an independent SO, stressing that action should take place "as soon as possible" (read its full findings on an independent SO on p10). The ECCC went as far as to suggest that such conflicts might also arise in distribution system operators in the future, but chair Angus MacNeil told Network that the creation of an ISO would help keep these to a minimum. Whitehead is complimentary about National Grid's performance in its SO role, going as far as to credit it as looking a˜er the best interests of the nation with its private work on strategic reserve and balancing reserve "despite the best efforts of the government to mess things up" by bringing in the capacity market. "I think National Grid has done a pretty good job and has done a lot of innovative work, sometimes despite the best efforts of government to do the opposite in looking at how the systems going to work in the future and what its requirements are." Whitehead sits in the void somewhere between the NIC and the ECCC. A more clearly defined SO, able to "I think having that better licensing arrangement is potentially very important and I think it is just wrong that Ofgem have rejected it in the way that they have. The challenge of some of these new technologies is how you fit that in with that landscape, not invent a new landscape as you might wish it to be for the next period."