Utility Week

22 | 10TH - 16TH NOVEMBER 2017 | UTILITY WEEK Policy & Regulation Conference Flexible Networks 1 November, Birmingham Views from the speakers: Peter Jones, technology strategy manager, ABB Power Grids "I think an independ- ent national system operator and regional system operators under public owner- ship could work quite well. Especially given some of the interest that we're seeing from parties that are not related to utilities, to bring forward disrup- tive innovation in private flexible energy networks." Flexible friends Network flexibility and resilience are essential to the energy transformation – but how best to attain it? This conference sought to find out. E nabling flexibility. It's the Holy Grail of energy system innovation. A goal which, if it can be achieved, will reduce the need for investment in new generation, empower renewables, slash carbon emis- sions, transform the customer's role in the energy system and disrupt conventional assumptions about the way energy networks – and their supply chain – operate and opti- mise assets. At the Flexible Networks Conference 2017, organised by Utility Week's sister magazine Network, these possibilities fired discussion and inspired presentations. The event, spon- sored by ABB, focussed on the potential of energy storage and demand-side response (DSR) to deliver system flexibility, and the sessions ranged through the policy, regula- tory and market frameworks that are needed to enable deployment of these technologies, and on to practical insights from live innova- tion projects. These real-life experiments in creat- ing system flexibility were equally broad in scope. For storage, they ranged through the findings of early vehicle-to-grid trials to industrial and commercial and grid-scale energy storage applications for flexibility. Inevitably, the projects exploring the latter sparked debate over whether network-owned storage is a necessary element of future flex- ibility markets. This point drew out diverse views, across different networks, as well as between industry and the regulator. On DSR, delegates heard about the rollout of Electricity Northwest's ground-breaking Class projects which could open the door for every distribution network operator (DNO) in Britain to unlock 3GW of demand flexibility. Steve Cox, ENW's engineering and technical director, shared how the technique is now allowing the network to provide flexibility benefits to National Grid, via a first of a kind link between the system operator and the DNO's network management system. But although Cox was enthusiastic about the "game changing" potential of Class's voltage control approach, he also warned that unleashing it on a wide scale could have unintended consequences for the wider flex- ibility market. Such uncertainties remain a hallmark of flexibility innovation, from domestic-level involvement, to the GW-scale flexibility that could be unlocked if inter- connectors were used for a greater purpose than straightforward energy trading – a topic tackled by Imperial College London's profes- sor Goran Strbac. Overall, the tone of the conference was both optimistic and ambitious. The progress made in recent years, which has seen system flexibility evolve from a conceptual idea to a tangible reality, has bolstered the sector's confidence and embedded innovation for flexibility into strategic business plans. This said, it cannot be denied that the challenges to delivering a dynamically and diversely flexible energy system remain significant. Greater collaboration is needed across power and gas networks. Advances in tech- nology solutions bring new network vulner- abilities as well as capabilities which need to be accounted, and the emerging poten- tial for peer-to-peer energy transactions – made possible by smarter meters or smarter blockchain platforms – need to be better understood. The sector may have come a long way in uncovering and embracing the potential of a flexible energy future, but the journey is far from over.

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