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Preparing the UK Electricity Network for Rising Cooling Demand

Terry osifo

The UK electricity network has traditionally been designed around winter peak demand, reflecting the country’s reliance on electric heating, lighting and seasonal energy consumption. However, recent summers have demonstrated that prolonged periods of high temperatures are becoming more frequent, bringing a new challenge that may require greater attention from engineers and policymakers.

Many UK homes were designed to retain heat during winter rather than prevent overheating during summer. As a result, there is growing interest in cooling technologies, including reversible heat pumps and air conditioning, to improve comfort and protect vulnerable occupants during heatwaves.

If the uptake of these technologies continues to increase, it raises an important question: are we adequately preparing the electricity network for a future in which summer electricity demand grows significantly?

Planning for this now could help avoid costly network reinforcement later. It also presents an opportunity to consider a more integrated approach that combines:

  • passive building design to reduce overheating;
  • energy-efficient cooling technologies;
  • rooftop solar PV to offset daytime cooling demand;
  • battery energy storage to reduce peak loading;
  • smart controls and demand-side flexibility; and
  • distribution network planning that considers both winter and emerging summer demand profiles.

The transition to Net Zero is changing how electricity is generated and consumed. Alongside the growth of electric vehicles and heat pumps, increasing cooling demand may become another important factor in future network design.

Addressing this early could improve network resilience, reduce future infrastructure costs, enhance energy efficiency, and help ensure that UK homes remain safe and comfortable as the climate changes.

Do you think future electricity network planning and building regulations should begin placing greater emphasis on summer cooling demand, or are current measures sufficient?

  • in reply to mapj1

    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.

  • in reply to mapj1

    Thanks Mike, I think you’ve highlighted one of the key issues.

    Using the internet for DSR offers flexibility, but it also introduces a dependency on a communications network that cannot always be assumed to be available or secure. Loss of connectivity, software failures or a coordinated cyber attack could all affect the operation of large numbers of connected devices.

    For that reason, I think any future DSR scheme should be capable of operating safely without continuous communication. Local control, sensible default operating modes and staggered reconnection after communications are restored would all help to avoid creating new demand peaks or unnecessary instability.

    I also agree that frequency response and other local measurements have an important role to play. They provide a level of resilience that does not depend on an external communications link and could support system recovery following a major disturbance.

    At the moment there are several different approaches being developed by different organisations. As flexible demand continues to grow through EV charging, heat pumps and, potentially, domestic cooling, there is a good argument for a more coordinated framework that considers resilience, interoperability and cyber security from the outset.

  • in reply to AJJewsbury

    Yes, I think the OpenADR standard used heavily in the US uses internet/IP based comms.

    It was rather unfortunately, to put it mildly, that the opportunity to build some of these basic DSR functions into the smart metering system was wasted, but that opportunity has now gone. At least it provides half-hourly metering, so that does at least allow more granular measurement to support DSR applications, albeit with the control following another route/system.

    There are some moves starting by UK Gov to get something in place in the UK to communicate electricity tariff rates via a common internet-based API system, so that appliances can receive and optimise against tariff rates. I believe that is just tariff prices, rather than control signals to actually trigger appliances to adjust their consumption. Currently, there's no standard for this, so while one utility has an API, many don't have APIs at all, and if they do the API may not be the same which then makes compatibility been tariffs and appliances a challenge.

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