What’s the first half of 2025 had in store for you?

If you work in the UK power community you’ll have seen 5.1TWh* of wind generated electricity being curtailed -or taken off the Grid- for fear of overloading it.  That’s enough to power a fleet of 50 electric HGVs to travel 1 billion, 464 million, 800,000 miles.  Or 10 of the larger cloud-supporting Data Centres for a whole year.

Curtailment doesn’t just cost power. It costs money too.  A lot of money.  £622.4 million so far this year, in compensation for lost green generation and catchup costs in gas generation when the wind drops.

Counting the cost of Floris. 

While we’re counting the apparently low cost of Floris’ recent blast across the UK, let’s not forget the 81GWh of wind energy we couldn’t harness. That’s enough to power around 9.6 million homes for a day. And the monetary cost? £12.5 million.

So, while we all welcome GB Energy and Crown Estates’ collaborative pledge to deliver 20-30 GW of additional wind generation by 2030, we need to be aware that there’s a big opportunity to create significant additional power capacity straight away by making better use of the energy and assets we have already.

A smarter, more tech driven approach to the way we manage energy.  

Key to this is a decentralised system using DC Microgrids.  Highly efficient and strategically placed, these DC microgrids will relieve pressure on the Grid by managing local power generation in a more flexible and intelligent way to meet local demand.   They are easy to deploy too, having relatively few infrastructural requirements.

Active Response. 

Here’s an example.  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 Microgrid 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.

UK Microgrid technology in world leading.  

The capability and technology to deliver these Microgrids exists already in the UK.  In fact, it’s UK-derived. What needs to happen now is a close collaboration with the Government to make them a reality.  This reality will not only deliver exponential value to consumers in a short time frame, but more broadly will firmly establish the UK as the global leader in electrification. And as the whole world electrifies, that’s a very exciting prospect indeed.

Want to hear more?

* Source. UK Curtailment monitor

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