The national grid is the backbone of the UK’s electricity supply, but the shift to a low-carbon energy system has introduced new challenges. As the country decarbonises and diversifies its energy generation sources, an increasing reliance on sustainable sources – which are innately more variable – is causing supply to become more unpredictable.
Simultaneously, many renewable sources are utilised at lower network levels in the distribution network, which carries electricity from the high-voltage transmission system to homes and businesses through the National Grid. These sources are transitioning the UK power system away from the traditional model where a small number of large generators inputted into the high-voltage transmission system into a complex network of multiple microgeneration sources mixed with the larger players, all feeding into the grid at different times, locations and capacities.
This transition requires an entirely different approach to grid management and operation, focusing primarily on demand flexibility – the capacity of demand-side loads to change their consumption patterns hourly or on another timescale (Berkley Lab). This approach is crucial to maintaining sustainability and, with £100 billion planned investment in new energy sources in the next decade, more flexibility and sustainable usage in the grid will be introduced (energy.uk).
