“With lightning’s danger, There runs the quick perspective of the future.”
The Pylons, Stephen Spender
Power is insidious, almost expected as a human right, and used in every facet of our lives and work. Without it appearing at the touch of a button, our lives and businesses would be markedly different. It is the invisible, silent sister to the smart world, inextricably linked to the phones, gadgets, sensors and servers that we develop and increasingly rely on.
A system not fit for purpose
The UK’s power production scaled in response to peak demand, building ever-larger capacity and culminating in power stations like Drax at 3,906MW total generating capacity. It traditionally relied on large production and large distribution – a model that worked in the industrial revolution when large energy production was co-located with large users of energy.
The grid takes energy on a one-way trip from the large-scale producer to the consumer in their homes. It travels down a network of high voltage cables – “Over the tree’d upland evenly striding” – across the landscape, splits into local networks at substations, swarms around geopolitical landmarks and finally enters your home.
The energy production system is plagued with hideous inefficiencies. From production to transmission, energy is not only wasted by the consumer. This whole system is not fit for purpose, but it was never designed as such. Instead, it has developed organically, by municipalities or enterprising individuals, who wanted to enable their towns and cities to participate in the industrial revolution.
Our need for power is changing
Climate change awareness, the sovereignty of energy supply and an understanding of air pollution impacts are changing the political and social view of power production.
With cities focused on reducing air pollution, fossil-fuelled power plants can no longer be sited near to centres of demand. Citizens in the countryside reject large plants anywhere near them.
‘Not in My Back Yard!’ or Nimbyism hit its stride in the 1990s and now citizens band together in concerted Judicial Review efforts to tie locally unpopular development in costly legal proceedings. While low carbon power is in vogue, nuclear options are largely disfavoured, with the few flagship proposed plants located in remote areas of the UK.
These forces, herded by some regulation, mean that the production and ownership of energy is changing and how we produce our electricity is in flux.
Data collated and analysed by ONS shows that coal and gas have been the main fuels used in the UK’s electricity generation since 1997. Although gas currently generates the largest amount of electricity, proportions have fluctuated over time, largely in line with prices.
Domestic production of gas also fluctuates. In 2015, renewables overtook coal for the first time to become the second largest generator of electricity. Nuclear power has declined since its peak in 1998, corresponding with the closure of a number of nuclear reactors.
A note: while the overall Terawatt hours appears to be decreasing, this is not the full picture. The UK reliance on energy imports has actually increased and it has been a net importer of energy since 2004.
So, we have a need for power to be ever-present in our lives as the companion to our smart society. And yet there is overwhelming public rejection and the legal mechanisms in place to disrupt large or nuclear power projects. This creates something of an (electrical) storm.
We need some way to domestically produce energy in a locally acceptable way without polluting the environment, and while supporting UK domestic industry, where possible.
Is the answer to everything renewable energy?
Small scale, off-shore or remote renewable energy seemed to be the panacea to this problem.
Renewable energy has grown steadily since 1980, with renewable energy sources in 2015 accounting for 25% of total UK electricity generation. Of this, 60% came from wind and solar power.
Small-scale renewable energy literally puts power in the hands of the people. It allows them to generate what they want and how they want it. Buying from the grid is no longer the only option and selling to the grid no longer the domain of the powerful.
Public acceptance of local and renewable power production increased as a result of the Feed In Tariffs (FIT) introduced on 1st April 2010. And no joke – the initial FIT rate offered for solar led to a huge demand for renewable power and solar panels in particular, which saw the government hastily amend the scheme in December of that year.
Paid for by increased energy prices on producers – helpfully passed on to consumers – the scheme is not without its detractors. But it’s hard to deny the overall effect as an incentive to enhance renewable energy take up in communities.
Suddenly, NIMBYs and staunch opposition become happy customers who support energy ‘Made In My Back Yard’. And it won’t be long before artisan breads and homemade premium jams are joined by local ethical energy offerings, despite the regulatory hurdles being greater than anticipated.
Local groups are mobilising. Power by the people for the people is real, and the MIMBYs are on the rise.
Practical issues with renewable energy
There are some practical issues with renewable energy. It is an intermittent supply and not always reliable – not so much flicking on a switch whenever you want, as making hay only when the sun shines (or when the wind blows).
Tidal and hydropower are more reliable from a generation standpoint (the tides can be predicted hundreds of years in advance). But there is something about it that doesn’t appeal to people – maybe it’s mixing electricity and water, who knows? Of course, you still have the ‘Cinderella’ issue about renewable heat, as heat makes up 45% of our final energy demand.
Batteries are the next contributor to solving to this generation issue. We can use them to smooth out the supply, store energy when there is overproduction, and release energy when there is underproduction compared to demand. A battery bank for the household is becoming more affordable and less intrusive by the day.
Next, of course, will be the house or business managed by a system that is smart enough to buy from the grid when power is cheap, then sell when the price rises. Some of these energy management systems will be installed across a portfolio of properties. But it is anticipated that houses will likely be a singular unit under private ownership and management – a single digital voice in a sea of other selfish systems.
Each of these clever little algorithms will happily buy and sell energy all day, every day, acting in the best interest of their homeowners. Some of the batteries can even be mobile – some smart city solutions imagine electric cars acting as the home battery. For example, they could log in and check your diary for the next day to see whether you need a full overnight charge, or if it can barter with your neighbour’s house to make extra income.
The legacy grid problem
There is another big issue looming: “So tall with prophecy, Dreaming of cities, Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck”.
Aside from the socio-political dimensions (the FIT levy is criticised as a reverse Robin Hood, with a cost imposed on the poor to pay the rich who could afford the initial investment), the problem is the legacy grid.
Built to support huge volumes of energy transmission up and down the country on its one-way journey from producer to consumer, the grid heats, protests and creaks when you push power the other way. As a consequence, for example is that the F line in the South West has had an embargo on connections with a waiting list for distributed generation. Schemes on constrained sites are required to have an automatic shut off if demand on site ever drops off. This stops the renewable system feeding onto the grid until the local grid can be upgraded by the district network operator (DNO).
Balancing the system may not be the DNO’s priority as it runs to catch up with connections – although we know DNOs are being encouraged to be District System Operators (DSOs).
The DNOs are hit with becoming much more active network managers than they ever expected. And while their priority areas remain the oversubscribed lines, the opportunity of a city-level demand management solution is unrealised and an open door.
A central management system is needed
The opportunity is there but unquantified. We have the technology but not the commercial systems on how to manage it.
Somehow all those intelligent, embedded, renewable battery-connected household learning energy management and trading systems need to be corralled over a wider area. They can’t all buy, and they can’t all sell at one time for a net minimal benefit. The power has to go somewhere, and it can’t appear from thin (if clean) air.
If the benefits of battery storage include levelised supply, then that levelling needs to be managed and predicted, and transfers of energy may need to happen across weather systems without a perceptible break in supply.
There has to be a central management system of some sort at city level to route and prioritise energy produced or stored locally. What will happen to critical services as they start to rely on local or decentralised power? In the recent snows, would you have let your self-driving electric car trundle off to charge the hospital as it was scheduled to? Or would you have overridden it to stay at home just in case it got stuck or you needed the power? Will we have to have a diesel back up system anyway, just in case?
Will there be sufficient agreements and cooperation between battery owners and power companies, Grid and generator? How will peak events be managed?
Concerted energy demand events across the nation, usually in response to something happening on live television, can cause surges that outstrip capacity to supply. (This has been greatly reduced by on-demand services, by the way, but still happens, notably the recent royal wedding of Harry and Meghan).
This is currently met in Short Term Operating Reserve agreements. A producer is effectively put on standby and must generate if notified within a certain time limit to provide the peak lopping service. Typically these will be diesel generators with their easy switch-on, switch-off, and while backup generators in hospitals could be used, they will often be owned by big private firms raking in money for waiting around.
Batteries are meant to smooth these peaks, switching between storing and releasing quickly. But in practice, how and by who will they be managed?
Opportunity knocks
There is a real opportunity for a city to lead in exploring the business models and infrastructure needed to support smart energy. It will take agreements with citizens and cooperatives as they bring their energy production to the bargaining table, a level of infrastructure investment (paid for by who?) and intelligence gathering to get better granularity around data to support the commercials.
The Amazon-effect of technology and communications is starting to happen now in the last bastion of ‘old’ industry, which spans more than two centuries and has led to and supported the society that we have.
What will the next two centuries bring? How will a neutral carbon-embedded smart technology energy system provide the security of supply and equitable access that our modern world craves?
Find out more about Perform Green
You can learn more about Perform Green by looking at how the company was founded, our list of clients and some of our recent work. If you’d like to speak to us about a challenge or opportunity that we can help with, email info@performgreen.co.uk or phone 01242 964032.