Preparing the UK Electricity Network for Rising Cooling Demand

A good starting point would be to look at how countries which already have this problem and have been dealing with it for many decades, manage it - so look at Southern Europe around the Mediterranean, some of the US utilities in the hotter states. They're all ahead of Britain on this topic because of their existing climatic conditions. A few observations I would make:

Firstly, we don't want to be pouring money into network and generation infrastructure to meet peak cooling, or heating demands, that lasts for short periods, resulting in under-utilised assets, high costs to businesses and consumers and exacerbates our already high electricity costs. We really want to be aiming to use the capacity we already have efficiently, so that leans towards solutions like flexibility / DSR, where competitive.

Many of those countries are ahead of Britain with their smart metering, and are also ahead of Britain on their time of use tariff offerings, with the hot countries typically having consumer TOU tariffs where the prices reflect the high costs of power and shortages of capacity during peak times for aircon / cooling demand, charging higher prices during the peak to incentivise people to shift demand to other times of day where possible. Compared to pouring money into upgrading networks or building peaking capacity, or even battery storage, DSR is generally the more economically efficient approach.

In the US states where cooling demand is a major contributor to peak demand, many of their electricity suppliers operate Demand Control / Load Control programmes, where they can automate control of air-conditioning loads, to shut-down or turn-down aircon loads for short periods in response to grid demand, or local demand conditions to manage loads on the system.

Now it's interesting that if you look at many aircon units and heat-pumps sold in the UK, typically the imported models, many have 'Smart Grid' capabilies already built-in, typically inputs to trigger the units to reduce or limit load, or shut-down, or in reverse to ramp-up demand by increasing heating or cooling. But of course, these are just control inputs and capabilities, to use them depends on the local country having some form of local or nationwide Demand-side Response comms infrastructure to provide the control signals, to connect into these heat-pump/aircon units - various other countries have these types of DSR systems in place and use them to manage these loads, for controlling aircon systems, heating systems, or other off-peak loads like EV charging.

In Britain we're years behind these other countries, we don't have a system for providing DSR controls to household loads, so anyone fitting aircon today is almost certainly not going to have automated DSR in place. But it's an area where Britain really needs to catch-up and start getting this infrastructure in place, not just for cooling, but also for heating and EV charging.

we don't have a system for providing DSR controls

There are some examples in the UK - e.g. Octopus's Agile tariff - together with a few gadgets (e.g. battery systems) that dynamically adjust according to the current (and future) prices. It is all very supplier specific though - there really need to be a generic supplier-agnostic system if it is to be taken up by appliance manufacturers in general. A obvious potential solution would be for appliances to be able to "tap into" the home area network (HAN) provided by smart meters - but that does seem to be closed (at least I've not seen any public specifications of now to listen in to it).

   - Andy.

Yes to date the British supplier-led approach is non-standardised and highly fragmented, it needs a consistent, standardised way for appliances to interact with tariffs and receive control singals, that works across all suppliers and has a standard interface arrangement with the appliances. 

Using the smart metering system as a standardised, secure system to provide signalling for home DSR would seem a very strong option, and that's exactly what some countries have done. The French 'Linky' smart meter looks a great bit engineering, every meter has a transmit-only serial port, similar to RS485, that can have a hardwired or wireless connection to the meter, with the meter providing a range of control signals to the appliance and other data like live metered import, to allow dynamic management of loads (ramping EV charging, or heating/cooling up/down)  so as not to over-load the incoming supply So it also solves this issue around overloading the individual supplies to the property and needing to upgrade those.

Unfortunately the SMETS2 British smart metering systems were never designed with these same capabilities, originally just the auxiliary load control switches (ALCS) or a home-area-network (HAN) controlled ALCs (on/off binary) and even that was badly implemented, as these capabilities are pretty much completely inaccessible to the home owner, or the installer fitting new appliances like heat-pumps, aircon, EV charge points etc. 

Again, the French got this correct, their meter was designed so that the comms is accessible, so the homeowner or the installer working on their behalf, can connect in their appliance comms cabling to the meter to get the loads working with their smart meter. 

It's a real shame Britain wasn't able to engineer a better smart metering system, as good as the French , and economically speaking probably has done quite significant harm to consumers from the various costs it then creates in needing to duplicate smart functionality in the home appliances and the very significant costs from unnecessary upgrading of distribution networks and home supplies that a decent DSR-enabled smart metering system could have avoided.

It’s also encouraging that many modern heat pumps and air conditioning systems already have smart-grid capability. The challenge now is developing the communications and control infrastructure to make full use of it. As cooling demand grows, this is an area where the UK has an opportunity to plan ahead rather than react later.

Terry osifo said:

As cooling demand grows, this is an area where the UK has an opportunity to plan ahead rather than react later.

Well the best opportunity for planning ahead was the smart meter roll-out, but that opportunity was wasted, so the next opportunity is around the development of the systems to support other flexible loads, like EV charging.

Any technical solution to domestic DSR won't, or rather should not, be specific to one particular energy usage, i.e. DSR with aircon cooling because that isn't efficient and requires duplication for each of the major applications. In practice, it's likely to be one standardised system encompassing the major flexible energy uses - EV charging, heat-pumps/aircon for heating, and for cooling, storage heating, possibly home batteries and turn-down of solar PV.

Terry osifo said:

systems already have smart-grid capability.

Often the problem will be that the smart-grid capability is tied to the manufacturer's infra structure - i.e. lock-in and data ownership issues. Frustrating for all!

Philip Oakley said:

Often the problem will be that the smart-grid capability is tied to the manufacturer's infra structure - i.e. lock-in and data ownership issues. Frustrating for all!

No, for heat-pumps many of them follow a 'Smart Grid Ready' standard, which originated in Germany and uses simple control using 2 binary inputs, to give 4 operating modes, so those input can be connected to pretty much any controls available in the local country, or within the building's systems. Bit of history and information on the controls in link below:

https://www.gridx.ai/knowledge/sg-ready

But it does make you think, when these kind of capabilities are already present in many of the products being rolled out and installed in people's homes, what a missed opportunity it is that Britain hasn't been able to get a standardised domestic DSR system in place to use these capabilties.

OK perhaps a noddy question, and hoping I'm not the only one wondering - in this context, what is a DSR, and what does it stand for?

M,

Yeah no problems, so DSR = Demand-side Response, so the ability to have electrical demand, so electrical loads, respond to signals to manage demand on the electricity system. As a complement to the traditional approach, where demand is basically unresponsive and generation then has to respond to meet whatever the demand maybe..

It's growing in importance for a few reasons, firstly because in many situations it's lower cost and more efficient to use DSR to adjust load, for example by turning down loads for short periods, or shifting loads to other times of day, to reduce demand, than to spend money upgrading networks or building more generation, to meet short term peaks in demand while there's excess, unused capacity at other times of day. That's the economic efficiency, cost saving case. There's a similar case around emissions / environment, so using DSR to shift loads to times of more renewables, shift loads away from times of peak demand when less efficient, carbon intensive generation is running.

The consumer benefits from this through lower bills, through a combination of payments for reducing demand when required and savings through automating appliances to minimise running costs via time of use tariffs. And more broadly all consumers benefit because it keeps the costs of operating the electricity system down, by using the capacity more efficiently so an important tool to keep bills lower by avoiding unnecessary investment.

But to make DSR work practically, you need a number of technical and commercial elements in place - loads which have some ability to adjust their power consumption, which fortunately things like heat-pumps, aircon, water/space heating and EV charging is generally able to do without impacting the consumer too greatly. Then you need that load to have been designed/built/installed with some form of controls or comms to allow you to adjust the load.

Then you, or rather a utility, or country, needs some infrastructure for how it communicates to all of these flexible loads, in homes throughout the region/country or customer base. Some way of sending signals to the loads, so that consumers can connect their loads to receive these signals and participate in DSR. 

Historically, Britain did this in early forms of DSR using the meter - timer switches to control storage and water heating systems for Economy 7 and off-peak tariffs, in the 1980s Britain introduced Radio Teleswitch which used the Radio 4 Long-wave radio system to send control signals to Teleswitch meters, for more sophisticated switching of loads to manage loads on the distribution networks, to adjust times for weather conditions.

Outside Britain, around the world, many utilities have standardised DSR systems which cover their region or country, to provide these signals to homes. So the French have their Linky smart meter, so you can use that to have your loads operate automatically with time of use tariffs, or via other DSR services where the customer is paid to adjust their load. In the US, many of their utilities use a system called OpenADR, particularly for controlling loads like aircon which a much bigger peak load in the hot US states, where the utilities pay consumers / offer reductions in their bills, from participating in these kinds of DSR services.

To make this work in a country, you need some standards and standardised systems so consumers have some way to get these signals and can connect up their loads to receive them and participate. And that's a particular problem in Britain where we have lots of suppliers, with no common DSR infrastructure, so even if consumer's have appliances which can take part in DSR, there isn't a standardised system for providing those signals to help manage the loads on the electricity system, which then means consumer's can't benefit and those capabilities are not used, pushing up electricity system costs and ultimately pushing up consumer bills.

thanks for the clarification - makes sense.
Mike

thanks for the clarification - makes sense.
Mike