Innovating for a net zero electricity system

Innovation is crucial for helping us to deliver a cutting edge, zero carbon electricity system. At the ESO we pride ourselves in facilitating innovation across the whole energy system, bringing together innovators outside of our organisation to solve challenges and unlock a net zero electricity system.

We recently invited stakeholders across the energy sector to submit proposals for projects which have the potential to address some of the key challenges we are currently trying to solve in the energy system.

[Read more about the three challenges we are trying to solve]

Our Open Innovation Events create a dedicated environment, enabling us to collaborate closely with innovators and stakeholders across the energy sector. The event creates a kind of ‘fast track’ innovation process to rapidly develop viable new projects for NIA or SIF funding.

This year, we had over 60 project proposals and after careful consideration, chose five projects to come join us for our annual two-day Open Innovation Event where project teams could develop their ideas in collaboration with subject matter experts from the ESO and network companies, ahead of showcasing them to a panel of industry experts on the final day.

The proposals we received reflected the whole system perspective we take to innovation, with projects addressing volatility inherent to renewable energy sources, consumer access to marginal carbon intensity grid data, large-scale production of green hydrogen for constraint management, and much more!

The five successful projects that were joined us at out Open Innovation Event included:

• Arup: Demonstrating how the large-scale production of green hydrogen can support the management of regional electricity transmission network constraints during times of high output from intermittent renewables generation.
• Imperial College London & University of Bath: Identifying emergent risks of oscillations and their root causes through perturbation injections at optimal locations on the GB system.
• Manitoba Hydro International: Practical transition into wider EMT (electromagnetic transient) GB Modelling - speeding up the process of performing electromagnetic transient simulations and increasing the flexibility of performing transient studies.
• Microsoft: Collectively developing a tool to better inform customers and producers about carbon impact of connecting to and operating in the grid to minimize carbon intensity.
• N-SIDE: Developing a probabilistic model solution that quantifies the risk of energy flow congestion, therefore improving constraint forecast accuracy and helping to better understand the risks, focus on the correct scenarios, and justify decisions.

Find out about future Open Innovation Events

If you would like to stay up to date on future events, we recommend joining our mailing list. This will make sure you are also notified of the latest ESO news and publications.