Solving the energy crisis

The UK and Irish elec­tric grids are at the fore­front in terms of the vol­ume of inte­grat­ed renew­ables. How­ev­er, because renew­able ener­gy sources, such as wind and solar, are inter­mit­tent and can change rapid­ly, their inte­gra­tion into the grid may not pro­vide suf­fi­cient pow­er dur­ing peak demand,” says Michael Phe­lan, chief exec­u­tive and co-founder of Grid­Be­yond, for­mer­ly Ende­co Tech­nolo­gies.

Main­tain­ing the bal­ance between ener­gy gen­er­a­tion and demand is cru­cial to ensur­ing the grid remains at a safe fre­quen­cy of 50Hz. Tech­nol­o­gy is pro­gres­sive­ly pro­vid­ing the solu­tions need­ed to man­age the fluc­tu­a­tions in grid fre­quen­cy, and with acces­si­bil­i­ty comes incen­tives for large ener­gy con­sumers in the indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial space to vary their ener­gy con­sump­tion. For short peri­ods, they can help to keep the lights on when grid fre­quen­cy starts to look dan­ger­ous­ly high or low, known as fre­quen­cy response events.

The key lies in ener­gy flex­i­bil­i­ty and ulti­mate­ly in tech­nol­o­gy

Seen as the way for­ward by sys­tem oper­a­tors and ener­gy indus­try author­i­ties, fre­quen­cy response pro­grammes are enabling ener­gy to be gen­er­at­ed or removed from the grid with­in sec­onds, when need­ed.

Mr Phe­lan says: “We’ve been man­ag­ing and reward­ing indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial clients’ par­tic­i­pa­tion into Nation­al Grid pro­grammes, includ­ing fre­quen­cy response, for more than five years. Over time we’ve seen an increase in the num­ber of events, indi­cat­ing that the Nation­al Grid is find­ing it ever­more chal­leng­ing to sta­bilise effec­tive­ly as renew­able gen­er­a­tion increas­es and that sys­tem iner­tia is reduc­ing too.”

Grid­Be­yond leads the UK and Irish mar­kets in pro­vid­ing pio­neer­ing inter­net of things demand-side response (DSR) solu­tions, and has devel­oped a smart grid opti­mi­sa­tion tech­nol­o­gy plat­form that enables sys­tem oper­a­tors like Nation­al Grid to bal­ance net­work fre­quen­cy rapid­ly and main­tain iner­tia, mak­ing greater use of renew­able tech­nolo­gies and mit­i­gate
against black­outs.

At the same time, indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial par­tic­i­pants ben­e­fit from sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial rewards for fluc­tu­at­ing their ener­gy con­sump­tion, and auto­mat­ed ener­gy sav­ings through the avoid­ance of demand peaks. In addi­tion, con­sump­tion, pre­dic­tive main­te­nance and OEE (over­all equip­ment effec­tive­ness) ana­lyt­ics can be auto­mat­ed and mon­i­tored via a cloud-based por­tal.

Anoth­er key tech­nol­o­gy for renew­able inte­gra­tion will con­tin­ue to be bat­tery stor­age. Renew­able ener­gy may be har­nessed at times of wind and sun, but any excess­es go to waste. To reduce this, ener­gy com­pa­nies can use bat­ter­ies to col­lect and store excess elec­tric­i­ty. How­ev­er, with mar­gin­al returns on invest­ment and rel­a­tive­ly short-term rev­enue streams, Mr Phe­lan points to a hybrid approach.

He says: “By con­nect­ing a bat­tery to an indus­tri­al or com­mer­cial site, elec­tric­i­ty can be stored when it is most abun­dant, and cheap, and used when demand on the grid exceeds gen­er­a­tion. Com­bin­ing this resilience with an advanced DSR plat­form geared to opti­mise sav­ings and rev­enue allows busi­ness­es to elim­i­nate the finan­cial risk asso­ci­at­ed with a stand­alone bat­tery. We have put the world’s first hybrids into the mar­ket and we are adding to that all the time.”

The UK is mov­ing from a cen­tralised sys­tem, with very large pow­er sta­tions gen­er­at­ing the major­i­ty of pow­er, to a decen­tralised one, where gen­er­a­tion is more wide­ly dis­persed, from solar pan­els on roofs to off­shore and inland wind farms. The pace of change dri­ven by tech­nol­o­gy has cre­at­ed some con­fu­sion for cus­tomers in terms of where the oppor­tu­ni­ties for future ener­gy flex­i­bil­i­ty lie.

Mr Phe­lan con­cludes: “Many of the new tech­nolo­gies have only become avail­able in the last few years. It’s about push­ing bound­aries and look­ing at the next phase of prob­lems to solve with the grid and large ener­gy con­sumers, such as fre­quen­cy bal­anc­ing, capac­i­ty ful­fil­ment, volt­age issues and trac­ing prob­lems. The key lies in ener­gy flex­i­bil­i­ty and ulti­mate­ly in tech­nol­o­gy, and facil­i­tat­ed in a way that is palat­able to all involved, from the grid to indus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and even­tu­al­ly res­i­den­tial con­sumers.”