Project LEO and TRANSITION have successfully run a live trial of flexibility trading on a new unique Neutral Market Facilitator platform that has been designed and developed by TRANSITION working with Opus One Solutions from GE Digital. The team is now seeking new participants for further trials. A transparent market for flexibility services will be fundamental to facilitate the UK's transition to net zero.
The UK has committed to decarbonising its power system by 2035 and distribution network operators (DNOs) will be key enablers of this change. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) Distribution will adopt Distribution System Operations (DSO) in the future and through its innovation projects, is developing new systems to deploy flexibility.
Flexibility is the ability to shift the timing and location of consumption and generation of electricity to support the network. A flexible energy system is expected to reduce the costs of our electricity system by �10bn per year by 2050 and could create 24,000 jobs, but to achieve that a fair and transparent market for flexibility must be developed.
Project LEO is SSEN's flagship innovation project and is working to model a local energy system for the future. Running concurrently with LEO, the TRANSITION project was created to demonstrate the functionality of DSO architecture. It has created the Neutral Market Facilitator platform which was developed by Opus One Solutions from GE Digital, to enable a transparent marketplace that can provide access for all flexibility providers to trade flexibility services.
The platform is unique because it links to other technologies that have been created by the project team, including the Whole System Coordinator, Power System Analysis and Forecasting tools. As well as enabling the end-to-end process of trading flexibility services between the DSO and flexibility providers, it will also facilitate peer-to-peer import and export capacity trading, maintaining the visibility of peer-to-peer trading activity on the network.
Following the successful testing of the Neutral Market Facilitator in the current trial period, which runs until February 2022, the second and third trial periods will incorporate new functions and test different flexibility services including peer-to-peer capacity trading. TRANSITION and Project LEO teams also intend to test the platform with a wide range of assets and users so are keen to hear from any organisations in Oxfordshire, including aggregators, that may be able to provide flexibility services.
Brian Wann, TRANSITION Project Manager for SSEN said:
"We are delighted that the first trials of our Neutral Market Facilitator platform have been successful and I would encourage interested parties with energy assets that could be used to provide flexibility services, to get in touch with the team and find out about our future trials. The more participation we have in the trials the more we will learn.
"The UK Government has set the ambitious target of a decarbonised electricity system by 2035 which, coupled with the increasing take-up of low carbon technologies such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, will contribute to a doubling of electricity demand by the same date. Use of flexibility trading through a Neutral Market Facilitator will be crucial to support delivery of these targets in a cost-effective manner."
Joshua Wong, CEO of Opus One Solutions from GE Digital said:
"Flexibility markets coordinated with smart energy networks, demonstrated in the TRANSITION project, will play a significant role in decarbonising the energy system. We are proud to support TRANSITION in developing the Neutral Market Facilitator platform, which provides key components to support the scaling and business case for flexibility service providers. Along with SSEN, we believe supporting flexibility as Business as Usual will be a key component of SSEN's adoption of DSO functions. We look forward to continuing to work with SSEN and using the key learnings from these trials to build better and scalable future solutions for a smarter, flexible and resilient energy system."
Project LEO is funded by the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. TRANSITION is funded by Ofgem's Network Innovation Competition.
To learn more about the TRANSITION trials, visit the website: https://ssen-transition.com/get-involved/ or email ssentransitionsse.com.
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks has put over 3km of its overhead lines underground at Thursley National Nature Reserve, and one of the old pylons has been incorporated into a unique piece of art at the reserve's Dragon Fly Trail.
The work, which began in 2014, was part of a nationwide scheme that encourages customers to nominate Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, National Parks and National Scenic Areas where the appearance could be enhanced with the removal of electricity poles or pylons. Over the course of its 18-month programme, the teams from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks dismantled 22 wooden poles carrying 11, 000 volt lines, and eleven metal pylons dating back to the 1960s which carried the 33, 000 volt lines.
Greg Moore, who led the project for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said: "This is such a beautiful part of Surrey, and the reserve is very popular with visitors, and so we had to make sure that access was maintained at all times during the project. We also had to make sure that our machinery didn't cause any damage to the natural beauty of the landscape.
"As well as having to contend with the ever-changing British weather, another challenge we faced was that this part of the country had been heavily targeted during the war, and so we employed a specialist company to carry out a detailed magnetometer survey of all the land we'd be working in to make sure there were no unexploded bombs from the past."
Once the project was completed and all of the new underground cables energised, Thursley National Nature Reserve wanted to create a lasting memorial to the pylons. To do this, and to highlight the diverse range of dragonfly species on the reserve, the reserve's owners, Natural England, commissioned local artists to create a design that recognised both.
If you would like to learn more about the scheme, and how communities can suggest areas which they feel could benefit from a similar undergrounding project, please visit the dedicated section on our website.
The above photo shows Greg Moore (l)andRobert Stickland with the new sculpture in the background.
As we look for more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways to live and work, a fund-raising scheme run by a Wiltshire hospice and supported by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has provided an answer to recycling old Christmas trees, in a way that gives back to the community and boosts the charity's resources.
The tree-cycling initiative, run by Dorothy House Hospice Care for the past six years, has raised a staggering �63,545 in the first week of 2022 by gathering the real trees from homes across areas including Bath, Radstock and Warminster. The charity asks people to sign up to the scheme in the run up to Christmas, so they can arrange for their old trees to be collected and chipped in the new year in return for a small donation.
This year, nearly 4,300 trees were collected across 16 Wiltshire postcodes by a band of volunteers who worked under current coronavirus guidelines to safely gather and transport the trees to central locations where they could be chipped. Since the start of the initiative in December 2016, SSEN has volunteered to help the charity by providing the chippers and colleagues needed to clear the thousands of trees the charity has collected; returning the chippings to local authorities and community groups for their use as environmentally friendly, reusable materials.
SSEN's Thomas Gardiner � who is based in the company's Ridgeway region � has volunteered his time to help Dorothy House Hospice Care since January 2017. The distribution network operator lends the vehicles and chippers required to carry out the recycling of the trees, and this year Thomas was joined by nine other colleagues* from SSEN to work on the largest amount of trees the charity has recycled to date.
With 4,280 trees to process, the team worked across two days (Friday 7 and Saturday 8 January) and used electric vehicles from SSEN's fleet to adhere to Bath's low emission zones, and to ensure the most environmentally friendly way to assist with the increasingly popular fundraiser.
Thomas said:"Over the last six years, this tree-cycling scheme organised by Dorothy House Hospice Care has raised vital funds while encouraging people to recycle their trees in the most sustainable way, with the by-product from them being shared locally for use in community areas such as green spaces, parks and playgrounds.
"Sustainability and the adoption of low carbon technologies is key to SSEN and this year we have been able to use some of our electric vehicles to make this the most environmentally friendly tree-cycler yet.
"My colleagues and I are delighted to be able to volunteer and to help raise money for this incredible local charity, while helping boost Wiltshire's community and environment through sustainability and recycling."
Steph Cox, Community and Events Fundraising Manager for Dorothy House Hospice Care said: "This was our sixth Christmas tree collection with a record amount of trees signed up to be collected. We are so pleased to have raised over �63,500, as this will go such a long way towards providing the vital care and support in our local community.
"We really couldn't run the collection without the continued support that SSEN have provided and I wanted to say ahuge thank you to all of the team for working so hard, in all elements, across our Bath, Radstock and Warminster postcodes."
Dorothy House Hospice Care supports and cares for patients and their families across a 700 square mile area, including Bath and North East Somerset, and parts of Wiltshire and Somerset. Their services are provided whenever and wherever they are needed; at home, in the Hospice, or in the community, to respect the uniqueness of each patient and their family, and empower them to choose the type of care they receive.
*SSEN colleagues volunteering their services for the Dorothy House Hospice Care fundraiser were: Chris Boylan, Charlie Cambray, Thomas Gardiner, Georgie Gough, Alan Harris, Craig Hooper, Phil Otton, Lizzie Perry, Dan Sherwood and Will Stevens.
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks has put over 3km of its overhead lines underground at Thursley National Nature Reserve, and one of the old pylons has been incorporated into a unique piece of art at the reserve's Dragon Fly Trail.
The work, which began in 2014, was part of a nationwide scheme that encourages customers to nominate Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, National Parks and National Scenic Areas where the appearance could be enhanced with the removal of electricity poles or pylons. Over the course of its 18-month programme, the teams from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks dismantled 22 wooden poles carrying 11, 000 volt lines, and eleven metal pylons dating back to the 1960s which carried the 33, 000 volt lines.
Greg Moore, who led the project for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said: "This is such a beautiful part of Surrey, and the reserve is very popular with visitors, and so we had to make sure that access was maintained at all times during the project. We also had to make sure that our machinery didn't cause any damage to the natural beauty of the landscape.
"As well as having to contend with the ever-changing British weather, another challenge we faced was that this part of the country had been heavily targeted during the war, and so we employed a specialist company to carry out a detailed magnetometer survey of all the land we'd be working in to make sure there were no unexploded bombs from the past."
Once the project was completed and all of the new underground cables energised, Thursley National Nature Reserve wanted to create a lasting memorial to the pylons. To do this, and to highlight the diverse range of dragonfly species on the reserve, the reserve's owners, Natural England, commissioned local artists to create a design that recognised both.
If you would like to learn more about the scheme, and how communities can suggest areas which they feel could benefit from a similar undergrounding project, please visit the dedicated section on our website.
The above photo shows Greg Moore (l)andRobert Stickland with the new sculpture in the background.
