Preparing the UK Electricity Network for Rising Cooling Demand

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

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