Power Struggle: Accelerating Grid Innovation to Meet the UK’s 2030 Clean Energy Goals

A newly published House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee report has warned the Government that unless it drastically steps up the scale and pace of building more energy generation and network infrastructure it is in danger of missing its clean power target of decarbonising the electricity system by at least 95% by 2030.

Commenting on the report Power struggle: Delivering Great Britain’s electricity grid infrastructure, Chair of the Committee, Baroness Taylor of Bolton said:
“The electricity grid is an essential part of modern life for households, businesses and transport links. Recent outages in Spain, Portugal and Heathrow have shown the devastating disruption that failures can cause.
“Given the scale of changes needed to the planning, regulation and delivery of energy infrastructure, and the UK’s historic record of delivering major infrastructure projects, our report questions the feasibility of meeting the clean power target.
“Time is already running out, and there is no room for complacency. The Government and the sector must ramp up their efforts to have a chance of success.”

The report follows an earlier assertion from National Energy Systems Operator (NESO) that 2030 clean power targets can only be achieved through strategic alignment of Grid assets. NESO, which has direction of the infrastructure development needed to meet the UK’s Green Energy targets, highlights:
• Ensuring a future where everyone has access to clean, reliable and affordable energy will require viable projects to connect to the Grid to provide the zero-carbon electricity needed to deliver a clean power system.
• To achieve the goals set out in the Government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan (CP30 Plan), we’re proposing to reform the connections process by introducing a new, agile, future-proof process for connection access to the transmission system that ensures strategically aligned projects are connected in a timely and efficient manner to achieve clean power.
• Inviting industry stakeholders to provide feedback, including via formal consultation will play an important role.
Commenting on them, NESO CEO Fintan Slye made no bones about the scale of the UK’s electrification challenge, describing it as the “Limit of What’s Achievable” explaining:
“All of the things that we’re talking about are much bigger than what we can solve ourselves” adding “It requires not only for us to do everything that we can do quicker, but also very, very differently as well.”

But these quick and different solutions may be closer to hand than imagined, both technologically and geographically.
A recent collaboration involving Ofgem and UK Power Networks (who own and maintain electricity cables and lines across London, the South- East and East of England) used TPS -designed advanced power electronics technology to create a responsive and automated electricity network capable of moving electricity from heavily loaded substations to others with spare capacity nearby. Named Active Response, this ground-breaking solution featured our Smart Grid converters working on both the low and medium-voltage network to allow power in each substation feed to be balanced whilst maintaining supply voltage.

So, in effect, by moving spare capacity around the network in this way, it is possible to substantially increase the network’s overall capacity, which would make a significant contribution to answering the energy demands of electrification. It also opens radical new possibilities for power transmission and energy network management.

While advanced power electronics solutions aren’t the complete answer to the electrification mountain the UK- and the rest of the world – must climb, they clearly have an important part to play. And what is more, they’re largely here and now.

For the UK, as a globally recognised leader in advanced power electronics technology, this presents an extremely exciting opportunity indeed.

To talk about how exciting  Contact Us | Find Out How We Can Help | Turbo Power Systems

You can read the full House of Lords report here: Power struggle: Delivering Great Britain’s electricity grid infrastructure

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