Project duration: November 2021 to March 2022
Regen was commissioned by ENA to revise and refresh the strategy to ensure that network innovation continues to be coordinated, focused on the key priorities for the energy system and delivers benefits to energy consumers.
The innovation landscape has evolved since the network innovation strategies were last published in 2020 and so have the priorities and views of energy network stakeholders. With the input and feedback of a diverse group of stakeholders, we’ve ensured that the underlying principles, themes and focus areas that guide network innovation continue to tackle our biggest challenges for 2022 and beyond. Stakeholder feedback has shaped every section of this strategy and we thank all those who were involved throughout.
The aim of the strategy is to enable stakeholders to understand the key priorities for network innovation and how to get involved. You’ll find this information, and lots more, in the strategy and you can also explore these concepts by navigating the interactive infographics below.
You can read the full 2022 Energy Networks Innovation Strategy by clicking the image below.
Stakeholder engagement:
The development of the 2022 Energy Networks Innovation Strategy was underpinned by an extensive stakeholder engagement process, and we thank everyone who gave their time and thoughts to help shape the future of network innovation.
We first invited stakeholder views with the launch of an online consultation and associated webinar where we asked for feedback on the proposed updates to the principles and themes governing network innovation for 2022. We heard from 138 of you and at least 80% of you agreed with our proposed revisions to each of the innovation themes. The online consultation summary report can be read here.
View the slides from the webinar here. The recording from the webinar can be watched below.
We then ran two workshops in early 2022, attended by 199 stakeholders, to explore in detail the key focus areas sitting underneath the themes. These focus areas are intended to help innovators better understand how they can collaborate on network innovation projects by clearly laying out the priorities within each theme. The workshop summary report can be read here.
Within the strategy, we’ve included a high-level guide which maps out the key stages involved in delivering an innovation project from start to finish. We hope this will help the innovation community better understand how to collaborate with the networks to solve some of the biggest challenges faced by the industry.
Regen was delighted to attend the Energy Innovation Summit on 28-29 September 2022, having worked on the content for the event. Previously known as the Energy Networks Innovation Conference (ENIC), this year’s event has been rebranded to The Summit as part of a new collaboration with BEIS, Innovate UK, Ofgem and Regen, opening the UK’s leading energy innovation event up to wider industry as well as attracting new domestic and international delegates. You can watch the livestreamed sessions here.
Regen was commissioned by Cornwall Council and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly LEP to conduct a short opportunity study, identifying the potential for hydrogen as a low carbon fuel and as a driver for innovation and economic growth in the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly area, focusing on the period to 2030.
Project duration: April 2021 – July 2021
Project lead: Grace Millman
Hydrogen is set to play a critical role in enabling the UK economy to achieve net zero carbon. As well as providing a low carbon energy source for difficult to decarbonise sectors, such as heavy transport, aviation and various industrial processes, hydrogen could also play an important role in system balancing as a multi-vector fuel, using very low-cost electricity during times of over-supply to convert, store and transport renewable energy for many applications.
The opportunity assessment summarised the current UK hydrogen policy landscape, outlined current and pipeline hydrogen activity in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and identified several sector-specific and general opportunities for hydrogen development in the region. As part of the assessment, Regen engaged several key Cornish organisations and stakeholders to gauge the scale of opportunity for hydrogen in the region generally and for specific sectors.
The report found that there are opportunities for hydrogen in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly by 2030, but they are focused on specific applications that are difficult to decarbonised through more conventional methods, including the decarbonisation of maritime vessels and heavy vehicles. Many of these opportunities will not be realised until the latter part of this decade or beyond. Hydrogen is still set to be a relatively expensive fuel, and this could be a big hurdle for many sectors. Government support combined with demand will be required to bring down the price of green hydrogen and incentivise fuel switching in carbon intensive industries.
Project duration: January 2020 to June 2020
The Net Zero South Wales 2050 innovation project has been undertaken as a partnership between Regen, Western Power Distribution (WPD) and Wales and West Utilities with funding from the Network Innovation Allowance programme.
This innovation project was about bringing two networks together, developing insights and value from an integrated approach to gas and electricity scenario planning and exploring an increasingly flexible and cross-vector system. It is clear that as a result of net zero the different energy vectors (power, heat and transport) will need to become more integrated, co-dependent and joined-up in their operation and long-term planning.
Regen has been working since 2015 on a Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) methodology that creates bottom-up, stakeholder led, locally relevant decarbonisation pathways for licence areas and regions. See https://www.regen.co.uk/area/distribution-future-energy-scenarios/
The main objective of the project was to develop a new methodology for conducting cross-vector scenario forecasting at a regional level, merging two pre-existing studies for gas and electricity, and to provide insights into how South Wales might transition to a net zero future under three net zero scenario pathways: High Electrification, Core Hydrogen and High Hydrogen along with a hybrid heat sensitivity.
The outputs from the report included a dataset, a companion report and a learning report which also contained recommendations for further study. Please contact WPD and WWU directly for access to the datasets.
Some key insights and learnings are outlined below:
Imperative of agreeing local pathways for heat decarbonisation
Carbon emissions from heat decline at different times in the different scenarios and there is a significant range in the scenarios around how electricity or hydrogen might be used for heat.
Although it is valuable to understand this range, for investment in networks and decarbonisation more certainty is needed.
This certainty is likely to come from both a clear national heat strategy coupled with local decision making. Any process would need to be thorough, transparent, and consultative, involving both gas and electricity networks. The sooner these decisions about heat pathways are made the better, for carbon and cost, for networks, people, and the whole energy system.
Understanding how demand and generation behaviour might shift
The analysis also looked a simulated day in 2035 and 2050 to understand how the pathways might impact daily typical demand. This found that by 2050, winter day electricity demand doubles in High Electrification, though High Hydrogen has highest total energy demand across both networks.
However in conducting the simulated seasonal day modelling, we established that applying generic profiles developed in 2019 are likely not reflective of the way dispatchable or flexible sources of distributed demand and supply will operate and interact with the network in 2035 or 2050. We recommend that more work is needed to understand and model what these shifts could look like.
Interaction between distribution and transmission in net zero
The project focused on distribution level however we found that although there was increasing level of distributed supply in both gas and electricity, a significant role remained for the transmission system. For example distributed hydrogen production via electrolysis is likely to meet only a proportion of hydrogen demand. Further supply will require a strategy for large-scale hydrogen production, storage and transmission in South Wales.
Similarly electricity demand and supply variance increases in both summer and winter, in all scenarios which highlighted that both local and national balancing is likely to be increasingly important.
View the project reports online here
To find out more about this project, contact Poppy Maltby at pmaltby@regen.co.uk and you can also watch the webinar about the project on the events page here.
