National Grid’s ‘eye in the sky’ to boost network resilience

National Grid is leading a project which will use satellite technology to monitor the UK’s energy networks and boost climate resilience.

The Eye in the Sky initiative has received around £515,000, the total project cost, from Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) and it is estimated it will save up to £22 million over a decade.

It will use data and imagery gathered from satellites that are already in orbit, with National Grid using a combination of commercial and open-source satellite data, having no plans to launch any of its own.

National Grid explained that ground patrols and aerial surveillance by helicopters and drones are traditional ways networks have monitored their assets, but these cannot always access the most remote areas quickly.

Eye in the Sky will provide satellite images and analytics to specialist engineers who will be able to constantly monitor changes to infrastructure and its surrounding environment. This will allow the “rapid assessment” of risk or damage, more efficient deployment of teams to fix issues, and network reconfiguration to avoid outages.

The data could also support the network with business-as-usual maintenance such as detecting overgrown vegetation or objects that could pose a risk to assets, and National Grid added that it could also help reduce emissions through aerial or ground patrols being scheduled more efficiently.

“There is even potential for the technology to create predictive models for future events associated with climate change, with atmospheric sensors correlating with network data to improve understanding of weather events’ impact on the grid,” the company said in a statement.

National Grid confirmed the initiative has now completed its initial ‘discovery’ phase which trialled its approach on more than 1,700 miles of energy network, and that it recently won extended funding through the SIF to further develop the concept into the ‘alpha’ phase, which commenced in August.

Supporting the project’s initial phases include the European Space Agency, Cranfield University, satellite data specialist Spottitt and DNV.

Sean Coleman, innovation manager at National Grid, said: “Eye in the Sky is exploring the really exciting prospect of using satellites to monitor grid infrastructure and the surrounding area, helping us understand how and why networks are being affected.

“If a change is detected, the technology could inform an engineer on the ground who can analyse the data to make a more informed decision on how to respond. It could further streamline our processes and bring benefits to consumers in terms of cost and grid resilience.”

Lucy Kennedy, co-founder and chief executive of Spottitt, said: “With a lack of geospatial information about what is going on in and around our critical assets causing £200 billion worth of preventable losses globally, it is exciting to see how the scale, revisit frequency and overall monitoring potential of satellites is being increasingly recognised and explored by owners of critical infrastructure of all types.”

Rafiek Versmissen, head of the Energy Strategy Advisory at DNV, said: “This is an imaginative project that will use comprehensive data collection to improve the visibility and contribute to increasing the resilience of our network infrastructure.

“The result will demonstrate, clearly, the actions required for efficient network planning, safety and risk mitigation.”