An initiative designed to unlock the potential of smaller, regionally-connected power resources is being developed on Great Britain’s south coast by National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), National Grid Electricity Transmission (ET) and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN).
Through its Regional Development Programme (RDP), the ESO is working with National Grid ET and SSEN – the electricity distributor for south central England – on a way to more efficiently manage the growing volume of distributed energy resources (DER) in the region, such as small and medium-sized wind and solar farms.
DERs are connected and provide power to regional power networks rather than to Great Britain’s main transmission system, improving the flexibility of the grid and its ability to draw on energy resources beyond the large centralised power stations.
The new south coast initiative will harness DERs’ potential still further, enabling them to play an important role should transmission network conditions become particularly challenging – for example around the time of a fault on the network.
By introducing a system called Active Network Management (ANM) onto south coast regional energy networks, National Grid ESO, National Grid ET and SSEN are enabling distributed generators in the area to continue providing power to the grid during difficult system conditions, when previously they might have been restricted off in anticipation of a fault or to avoid overloading the system.
ANM systems offer vast improvements against traditional ‘intertrip’ systems, which only enabled on or off settings for connected generators when faced with adverse network conditions.
Under ANM control, multiple DERs on the south coast network can potentially continue to generate power within controllable limits, monitored and adjusted in real time to meet demand, and – importantly – reducing the need for generation to be completely curtailed.
The initiative will benefit a region which has already seen significant growth in DER, encouraging new connections to SSEN’s network and making sure as much generation as possible can be maintained according to the system conditions.
