National Grid has secured £1.7 million from Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund to further develop four innovation projects.
National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) has been awarded £920,000 for projects to support the decarbonisation of rural communities and the construction industry.
Rural Energy and Community Heat (REACH) aims to address the difficulties in supplying adequate electrical capacity to support the take-up of low carbon technologies in isolated areas. The new funding will enable engineers to refine previous design work for shipping container-sized rural energy centres. These will have standardised equipment that can be easily sited within communities to enable the connection of heat pumps, electric vehicle chargers and renewable generation.
Road to Power seeks to support the growing use of electricity to power road and other construction equipment.NGED estimates electric-powered big plant machinery, such as excavators and road rollers, will lead to a surge in demand for temporary connections on its network by 2050. Road to Power aims to support this rise through modelling increased demand and introducing a self-service connection tool that provides estimates for interruptible and flexible temporary connections, in addition to the standard approach.
National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) has been awarded £870,000 for two projects. One will investigate certification and standards for superconducting technology, developing blueprints for the technologies and capabilities needed to trial them on the GB energy system. Look NortH2, with D National Gas, Guidehouse and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, will take a cross-energy vector approach to assess the viability and potential impact of co-locating assets offshore including on artificial islands.
The projects have been funded through the programme’s Alpha Phase, which allows for the testing of innovation at a scale that can support future commercialisation and integration into the UK energy networks, typically following earlier feasibility work delivered through the Discovery phase.