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.

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

I suppose the other option is to have the DSR communication system done separately from the electricity distribution system - e.g. by using the internet (which is how some of the Octopus agile system works I gather - downloading half-hour unit prices for the next 24 hours) - the distribution system only then has to record the half-hour usage (which even the UK smart meter system is usually capable of).

   - Andy.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. That’s a very helpful overview of Demand-Side Response (DSR) and its potential role in managing future electricity demand.

I agree that DSR could become an increasingly important tool as cooling demand grows in the UK. Rather than reinforcing networks solely to accommodate a relatively short summer peak, using flexibility to shift or temporarily reduce non-critical loads appears to be a more cost-effective and sustainable approach.

As you mentioned, technologies such as heat pumps, air conditioning, EV charging and domestic battery storage are naturally well suited to flexible operation. If these can respond automatically to price signals or grid requests, much of the additional cooling demand could potentially be managed without major infrastructure upgrades.

I also think there is an important link with building regulations. Improving passive cooling measures, such as shading, ventilation and solar control, would reduce the cooling load in the first place, while DSR could then help optimise the remaining electrical demand. Combining better building design with flexibility services, smart tariffs and distributed energy resources may prove more effective than relying on network reinforcement alone.

It will certainly be interesting to see whether UK network planning begins to treat summer cooling demand as a significant design consideration in the same way that winter heating demand has traditionally been.

That’s a good point. Using the internet as the communications platform rather than relying solely on the electricity distribution infrastructure could provide greater flexibility and reduce the need for dedicated control networks.

As you mention, suppliers such as Octopus already demonstrate that dynamic tariffs and cloud-based control can work effectively for many domestic loads. Smart appliances, EV chargers, heat pumps and battery storage systems can receive pricing or control signals over the internet and automatically optimise their operation while the smart meter simply records the half-hourly consumption for settlement.

The challenge, however, is interoperability and standardisation. If each supplier or manufacturer develops its own communication platform, consumers may be locked into specific ecosystems and the wider system benefits could be limited. A common set of communication standards and protocols would help ensure that flexible loads can participate regardless of supplier or equipment manufacturer, making DSR more scalable and effective across the UK electricity system.

As cooling demand grows alongside electrified heating and transport, that level of interoperability may become just as important as the physical network itself.

There is however the problem of what happens when the internet is down, or worse deliberately jammed or spoofed. 

Done badly internet based DSR  could provide an exposed 'surface' for a cyber attack, that allows massive load switching of the kind we wish to avoid, that can be used to disrupt or even damage the electrical distribution network

Much as we now design newer military kit to operate in GPS denied environments, (we learn from Ukraine and other places) we may want to recommend something similar to ensure graceful fall-back to a safe state in the event of loss of internet, or incorrect network behaviour generally, be that due to either simple breakdowns, or hostile action.

  It might be nice at the least to include a fall back to total load-shed in the event of falling frequency or similar to allow a power black start to be lightly loaded. (and I'm aware the falling frequency would have to be programmed in, rather than really inertial when we have a lot of inverter derived power)

As I understand it right now we have a hotch-potch of not well co-ordinated approaches, but that does not mean something better and more holistic should not be being considered.

Mike

Thanks Mike, that is one of the reasons I don't yet have a smart meter (the possibility of it disconnecting me by accident/design). I did wonder if anyone has considered a scheme similar to the way the TCP/IP system works i.e. collisions are detected, try again after a random time. In the case of a power network this could be triggered by voltage or frequency change - ramp up or down use, delayed by a random time so the system self regulates to some extent but individual devices are not centrally controlled.

Thanks Mike, that is one of the reasons I don't yet have a smart meter (the possibility of it disconnecting me by accident/design). I did wonder if anyone has considered a scheme similar to the way the TCP/IP system works i.e. collisions are detected, try again after a random time. In the case of a power network this could be triggered by voltage or frequency change - ramp up or down use, delayed by a random time so the system self regulates to some extent but individual devices are not centrally controlled.