UKPN saves £43m in upgrade work through DSR

UK Power Networks (UKPN) has saved £43 million of asset investment for the next eight years as a result of demand side response (DSR) trials.

The network has been able to delay the investment it would otherwise have made over the next eight years to reinforce the grid, after DSR trials carried out as part of its Low Carbon London project revealed a good level of response from businesses when called on to reduce energy consumption.

Thirty-seven participants voluntarily reduced their electricity consumption sufficiently to serve 18,000 homes at peak time.

UKPN will use DSR to manage particular sites which are occasionally close to their capacity limits, but where upgrading the network would have delivered more capacity than is needed on a general basis.

The Low Carbon London research project was developed by UKPN as part of the Low Carbon Networks Fund to find the most cost-effective way to manage new and changing demands on the electricity networks of the future.

The £28.3 million project trialled smart grid technologies and DSR measures, while looking at ways to accommodate the anticipated growth in decentralised generation and higher future demand from electric vehicles (EV).

EV trials revealed that networks only need to be able to accommodate 20 per cent of the total maximum demand from EV charging when more than 50 EV users are connected as demand is spread over time.

They also showed that 70 per cent of EV users moved to charge their EV during off-peak times.

UKPN was also able to determine that a third more distributed energy plants can be connected to networks by monitoring the distributed assets when customers allow it.

The project also conducted smart meter trials which revealed that there could be a 10TWH saving in electricity consumption by 2020 achieved by consumers switching to more efficient appliances.

UKPN’s head of future networks Martin Wilcox said: “Low Carbon London provides key information to urban distribution network operators to enable the uptake of home and workplace EV charging, supports the increase in combined heat and power plants in urban areas, and facilitate home electric heating and micro-generation uptake.

“The project has also demonstrated improvements that can be made by supporting these changes in a ‘smart’ or optimised way as opposed to necessarily building new network to support the new, unmanaged, load.”

Ofgem senior partner for distribution Maxine Frerk said: “Research by Low Carbon London showed that smarter grids can make the energy network more secure and efficient, resulting in real cost savings for consumers.”