Hydrogen trial among latest winners of Network Innovation Competition

Ofgem has announced the winners of the latest round of its Network Innovation Competition – now in its seventh year – awarding £21.2 million across one gas and two electricity projects.

They include the latest phase of Northern Gas Networks’ H21 initiative to develop plans for the conversion of gas networks to run on 100 per cent hydrogen.

It is one of the lowest amounts the regulator has awarded since the competition was introduced alongside the RIIO framework in 2013, comprising less than a quarter of the available funding (£70 million for electricity and £20 million for gas).

Of the eight projects that initially applied for funding, three were rejected at the screening stage:

• National Grid Electricity Transmission’s H-Awel project to produce hydrogen using a 50MW electrolyser connected to Vattenfall’s Pen y Cymoedd onshore wind farm;
• National Grid Gas Transmission’s Captivate project to build a mineralisation plant to transform carbon dioxide emissions from one of its compressors into sellable products such as construction aggregates;
• And UK Power Network’s Destiny project to create a “flexibility lab” of 1,000 homes with various combinations of low-carbon technologies to gauge the potential for households to provide flexibility services in terms of volumes, prices and reliability.

The five projects to make full submissions requested a total of £62.9 million. Ofgem rejected:

• UK Power Networks’ request for £7.5 million for its Constellation project to design, develop and demonstrate intelligent electricity substations;
• And Western Power Distribution’s request for £13.3 million for its FreeVE project to explore how domestic demand profiles are affected by the installation of various combinations of low-carbon technologies.

The winners are explored in more detail below:

H21, Northern Gas Networks

The H21 programme is led by Northern Gas Networks (NGN) but is a collaborative effort by the whole of the sector. The aim is to develop detailed plans for the conversion of gas networks to run on hydrogen and build the evidence base needed to enable an investment decision.

NGN has already released a blueprint for a £22.7 billion hydrogen network that would take root in Leeds before spreading to other cities across the North of England including Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle.

Supported by £8.9 million of funding from the 2017 competition, the company began testing pipes and fittings for their susceptibility to leakages and embrittlement in July. The tests will be completed in January and the results published in summer 2020.

For the latest phase of the programme, NGN will test the conversion of an unoccupied section of the existing network to demonstrated that it can be safely operated and maintained and allow live community trials to commence in 2021. It will also explore public perceptions and understanding of hydrogen networks in partnership with the University of Leeds.

NGN chief executive Mark Horsley said: “We firmly believe repurposing the network to carry 100 per cent hydrogen would represent a huge step forward towards meeting the UK’s sustainability targets, as well as having a crucial role to play in satisfying customer expectations for a cost-effective and minimal impact transition to lower carbon energy.

“Our research, along with government data exploring the use of hydrogen in buildings and appliances, will not only enable policymakers to progress a policy decision on hydrogen, but will also bring customers along on the journey. Their understanding is absolutely central to acceptance of this technology.”

The project will cost £7.8 million, of which £6.8 million will come from the Network Innovation Competition (NIC).

DC Share, Western Power Distribution

Western Power Distribution’s DC Share project will attempt to lower the connection costs for rapid electric vehicle (EV) chargers by linking together neighbouring secondary substations to enable them to share capacity.

It has already tried meshing its substations using “equalisation networks” as part of previous innovation projects. However, this time it will do so using a direct-current circuit, which offers benefits in terms of losses, reach and complexity. EV chargers will be directly connected to the circuit and will be cheaper as a result.

Doing this, the company hopes, will allow rapid chargers to be rolled out without having to make more expensive and time-consuming upgrades.

The project will cost £5.6 million and will be supported by £4.7 million of NIC funding.

Resilience as a Service (RaaS), Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks

For its £10.7 million Resilience as a Service project, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) will trial the use of distributed low-carbon technologies such as renewables and batteries to maintain power supplies on remote islands following networks faults.

This will avoid the use of the carbon-emitting diesel engines traditionally used to provide backup generation on remote islands.

SSEN head of future networks Stewart Reid said: “Maintaining this resilience as we meet net zero is only going to become harder unless we apply new methods. These methods need to take advantage of new partnerships, local renewables energy and the advances in the digital world.”

He continued: “The RaaS project will allow us to accelerate and de-risk the use of services for providing resilience, including enabling infrastructure, data exchanges and commercial arrangements, thereby reducing uncertainty for customers and industry.”

The project will be supported by £9.7 million of NIC funding.