A home-grown, renewable energy generator from Orbital, idle off the coast of Scotland. It is operational - it can generate power. So, why is it idle? Because a car with no wheels goes nowhere, andOrbital is not connected to the grid. But the blocker doesn't sit with Orbital, rather the transmission lines connecting it to the grid don’t exist.
The Orbital tidal energy generator can power 200,000 homes, which sounds like a lot, and it is. Tragically though, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed for the UK to meet its net zero goals. There is a substantial hurdle that too many are unaware of: the lack of modern power flow analysis and the investment to match it along with all the other advanced analytics required to make that net zero goal feasible.
This moment requires the greatest level of attention - on the magnitude of fighting COVID or perhaps, even more apt, rebuilding Europe in the post-war era, with a mind on the future success of the continent. The scariest part is we might not win this one.
It’s up to the UK and those in charge of the future direction of our energy system to consider the mechanisms that must be put in place for us to write a history that can be handed down to the next generation - with haste and hopefully pride.
The electricity and transmission industry has known for 20+ years that the grid requires - not a serious enhancement but - a fundamental overhaul in order to unlock additionality and flexibility. Both are required to avert the worst effects of climate change. For the uninitiated, additionality refers to the extra renewable energy sources (e.g. a new solar farm) required to curb the effects of climate change, which necessitates that new renewable energy sources must be added at a rate that is greater than the demand for energy. That demand continues to grow.
Power flow analysis is important to adding these new sources of energy along with the transmission. Any change to the grid has to be mathematically validated. The way power flow analysis is performed today feels archaic. Most utilities use PowerFactory or a similar desktop application, which allow analysts to thoroughly validate prospective changes to the grid and easily parameterise electric models.
The standards used today for these applications are old tech developed long before (e.g. 35 years ago in the case of PowerFactory) all the technologies we take for granted today. They lack the ability to automate or script parameterisation and scale these electric models for the purpose of building simulations. For clarity, parameterisation in this case means permutations in a simulation (not adding more individual parameter options), for example, while scale is in reference to running millions of permutations in parallel (think high-performance computing aka HPC).
That improvement would greatly aid in expediting the powerflow analysis process that can take weeks or even months in some instances according to our industry experts. Minimising this duration is crucial to expediting additionality. Also, it is essential to unlocking flexibility as DERs make electricity models more complex.
The UK deserves something better. We need something that scales with the huge complexity that the grid will face and is facing today. We can already see the complexity rising as is expressed in the ever increasing size of the interconnection queue.
The increase in connection requests has lengthened project lead times. In the United States, average queue lead times rose from three years in 2015 to five years in 2022, while in the United Kingdom 120 GW of projects awaiting connection have been offered connection in 2030 or later. International Energy Agency
This will become a traffic jam that stretches decades if power flow analysis is not modernised with haste (the how and what behind that has been covered by others).
Opposition to the call to expedite development of power flow analysis might come from the perspective that digital twins answer this question, but the reality is digital twins are only one side of the coin. They represent the replica of the electrical network. Advanced power flow analysis is required to gain timely insight from electric models, which are themselves a form of digital twin.
In the UK, large scale investment in advanced analytics (aka data science) is almost exclusively experienced in the financial services industry. Achieving outcomes through data science is a complex task - one that is a multi-disciplinary affair requiring breath and depth of skills.
As someone who's been in the trenches of AI and ML implementation, I've seen firsthand the struggles organisations face when trying to scale data science projects beyond the design phase. The key lies in building a cross-functional data science team (something I discuss here) that can embrace a practice and culture empowered by technology and data.
That might sound like an investment and undertaking, and it is, but the full experience must be committed to. Practice and culture is an institutional muscle. Like any muscle if you don’t use it - you lose it. The subtext is - one cannot buy their way to success by purchasing tools. If you prefer a sports analogy - one cannot train for a marathon by merely driving along the race’s route.
This spirit coupled with the fiscal risk tolerance to support it is hard to come by in the UK. By way of an anecdote, I worked at a financial analytics company where I helped them scale an advanced analytics programme. The engagement was successful. As a consultant, I was able to walk away with a great story, but one comment about a potential new advanced analytics programme from the Head of Data Engineering there stuck with me: “No, we won’t invest in that. What a waste of money. We’ll just wait for the Americans to do it.”
While that was humorous to me - as I am American - it was also disappointing. There was no drive to break new ground. I didn’t view it as a UK “thing” until I kept running into people with similar stories from their time working in data in London.
So, as it is in financial services, which tends to do advanced analytics better than anyone else outside of silicon valley FAANG-type companies, funding is not allocated to truly succeed at our most complex challenges.
We are not gearing ourselves to break new ground, and so, we won’t.
The goal for net zero should not be just to survive but thrive. With any luck, we can avoid the worst of the climate change. We will need significant changes to how we perform power flow analysis and forming the data science teams required to maximise the additionality and flexibility of the grid.
I mentioned the (post) war era above. Unity of command was broadly considered a success, enabling unified control of Allied forces that unlocked the ability to effectively plan amongst a diverse group with differing political objectives but ultimately one common wartime objective.
What’s needed is an ‘organiser of victory’ - as Churchill described World War II commander George Marshall - who holds the long-term impact in mind and looks beyond the individual agenda of any given government or business. Marshall's success stemmed from his ability to build strong alliances despite interests that were not fully aligned, and this is needed if we’re to build a grand vision that overcomes the competitive forces within the energy industry.
These forces have held back progress at pace and at scale. We see the beginning of this through programmes such as the Data Sharing Infrastructure (DSI), but it does feel that the grand vision needs an organiser - its 21st century Marshall - with a keen awareness of data science bottlenecks and team formation.
The UK appears to be in a tight spot with its ability to innovate beyond the confines of Canary Wharf, Liverpool Street and Bank. However, for the doom that might be read into this article the aspiration is hope.
We are in need of another organiser of victory: one that is empowered to establish a unity of command across the breadth of UK energy; one that understands the nuances of the practice and culture required to unlock technological innovation; one that can champion the essential need of advanced power flow analysis alongside the many branches of data-related innovation that will stem from such work.
The organiser of victory won’t succeed on their own. The UK’s ability to transform into an energy tech titan can be fostered if long-term, multi-disciplinary partnerships are forged - they can guide the UK energy sector through this transformation and ultimately into a state of self-reliance.
Operation NetZero can be a success.
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