A year in the life of DSOs | Visibility and open data

To get the most value from their assets, both electricity distribution networks and their customers need to know how they are being utilised and where spare capacity is available. Tom Grimwood looks at how distribution system operators (DSO) have been working to improve visibility over their networks and make this information accessible to others.

For DSOs to make effective use of flexibility services and curtailable connections, visibility over the utilisation of their networks is a must. Until recently, this is something they lacked for their low-voltage networks.

UK Power Networks (UKPN) has taken a two-pronged approach to addressing this issue, the first being the rollout of physical monitoring. At the beginning of the ED2 period, UKPN had sensors installed a roughly at roughly a fifth of its 110,000 substations and plans to increase this by another 10,000 over the price control period.

DSO director Sotiris Georgiopoulos says: “We want to, as quickly as possible, get visibility of the full network and we recognize that it is too expensive and it’s going to take too long if we just do this through putting sensors on the network.

“At the same time, we know there are other sources of data out there – smart meter data – that can give us a pretty good view of how much the network is utilised, provided you put the data in a suitable model. We have worked with our data science teams and our analytics teams and we’ve created a low voltage utilization prediction model.”

Georgiopoulos explains this model is fed with network monitoring data, disaggregated consumption data from 100,000 smart meters and “a whole bunch of other third-party data that we’ve been able to get.” The smart data gives UKPN insight into customers, such as those in rural areas, it wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.

“We used that data to essentially train our model and now we have an LV utilisation model that gives you pretty good visibility of every substation on the network and what is the capacity utilisation today. That’s visibility we’ve never been able to have before and it’s all down to advanced analytics and artificial intelligence technologies.”

He says UKPN is continuously looking for new datasets to feed into the model so it can understand how behaviours are changing and update it accordingly. While Georgiopoulos doesn’t believe it will be necessary to monitor all substations it will aim to do this for the larger urban ones.

“Maybe over time we will monitor everything, but I think in the in the foreseeable future, in the next 5 to 10 years, we need to use a combination of AI and monitoring and third-party data including smart meeting data to get the best visibility.”

This approach, combining physical hardware and intelligent software, is not unique to UKPN.  At the beginning of the ED2 period, National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) only had monitoring installed at several thousand of its 190,000 substations. It is currently aiming to increase this to more than 15,000 by the end.

DSO director Ben Godfrey says the use of smart meter data means NGED is already very close to the point where no further monitoring is needed to obtain utilisation data for the whole of its low-voltage network, although “it’s a little too early to say” whether it will therefore scale back the rollout.

Importantly, Godfrey says physical monitoring can provide “significant benefits in terms of operational understanding of faults on the network and some of the variability of loadings within a half hour period that the smart meter data won’t be able to capture”. He says direct monitoring really comes into its own when it comes to understanding potential fault hotspots and responding better to customer interruptions.

Paul Glendinning, energy systems director at Northern Powergrid, says it currently has monitors in place at around 4,000 low-voltage substations and plans to add another 10,000 by the end of ED2: “That gives us visibility over our LV network for 80% of our customers.”

“Let’s say there was a rural village that just went bananas in load growth, we would find it pretty quickly,” he adds. “That’s not happening right now.”

In such instances, Glendinning says the company can first install temporary monitoring, before deciding whether something permanent is needed. It may ultimately roll out monitoring to all of its low-voltage substations, but he says this certainly won’t happen any time soon.

Andrew Roper, DSO director at Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), says it currently has monitoring installed at 4% of its low-voltage substations and is planning to raise this proportion to 20% by the end of ED2.

Roper says they do not expect to go much further than this, except in instances where “there are specific network issues that we want to investigate further.” These could, for example, include suspected theft: “If people are stealing electricity, then they won’t have a smart meter.”

Open data

The data DSOs are collecting about their networks is not just useful to themselves. The parties providing flexibility services and taking up flexible connections also need access to this information so they can make informed decisions.

Georgiopoulos says a key focus at UKPN has been providing connecting customers with information about the capacity available on the higher voltage networks: “Over the last year we have released a very comprehensive set of historical data on the high-voltage and extra-high-voltage network, including any constraints and curtailment”. This data is updated on a regular basis “so customers can understand what’s been happening on the network, and they are able to model the impact of their connection.”

The company recently launched a new service providing personalised curtailment reports for customers seeking a connection. As well as half-hourly forecasts for “when and by how much” their site is likely to be curtailed, the reports also provide a breakdown of which network constraints could impact their connection and information on the other projects ahead of them in the connection queue, including their capacity and technology type.

Georgiopoulos says UKPN is working towards releasing their future network models “so anyone can, not just see what the utilisation of the network is now, but also model the network with our data, and their data on top, to make informed decisions about connections or operations.”

Glendinning says Northern Powergrid has released a total of 56 datasets through their open data portal and its customers are “absolutely loving it”. He gives as an example the heat maps for network capacity, which he says are highly granular and updated monthly: “People are using them all the time to make better applications to us.” The company has also released anonymised connection queue lists for each substation. In combination with half-hourly utilisation data, it can use this information to work out how likely they are to be curtailed.

Roper highlights SSEN’s launch of its Near-Real Time Data Access (NeRDA) platform which is updated every few minutes with near-real time power flow information for the whole of its network. He says the platform has seen “massive” levels of interest, with the site being visited more than 3,000 times per month and 18 companies so far plugging in to its application programming interface (API).

The flow of data between DSOs and their stakeholders is not just one way. Godfrey says NGED has launched a tool called Pride that allows local authorities to submit data “for us to ingest back into our planning processes”.

One of the first tasks of the National Energy System Operator that will shortly replace the Electricity System Operator will be the creation of a series Regional Energy Strategic Planners (RESPs) that will work with local authorities and network companies, among others, to develop strategic energy plans for each region of the country.

Godfrey says digital tools like Pride can do “quite a lot of the heavy lifting” in terms of exchanging information and help reduce the burden on already strained local authorities.

This is the last in a three-part series looking at how DSOs have evolved over the first year of the ED2 price controls:

• To read the first part about setting up and growing, click here. 
• To read the second part on flexibility services and curtailable connections, click here.

Utility Week recently launched a campaign called Make it a LAEP Year urging the government to mandate, and provide funding for, all local authorities to develop local area energy plans. The Energy Systems Catapult has estimated the cost to the Treasury at £40 million.  To sign up to the campaign, please email our editor James Wallin at jameswallin@fav-house.com.