As the GB Transmission System Operator, National Grid has visibility of transmission connected assets in terms of their presence, size and behaviour. In most cases National Grid also has mechanisms through which to influence the behaviour of these assets. However, this visibility does not extend into the distribution networks. As the GB electricity system becomes more distributed National Grid’s visibility of an increasing proportion of assets decreases. This is particularly true for electricity storage, a significant proportion of which is likely to be deployed within the distribution networks and operate under business models that do not exist, and so are poorly understood, today. As a result of the above, this project will focus on storage assets that are embedded within the distribution networks and with a time horizon of five to eight years to prioritise any potential risks.

Objectives

At the end of the project, National Grid will receive a report discussing:

• a list of evidence-based and realistic use cases that may require intervention by the System Operator to manage;
• how the impacts of these use cases may be seen by the System Operator and the kinds of management actions required;
• prioritisation of which use cases may present problems in the short to medium term and why;
• what actions may be required to mitigate the risk of these use cases;
• a list of potential innovation projects that could explore specific challenge areas in more detail, for example:
• understanding the influencing interactions and cannibalisation of different sized devices with different objective functions and incentives
• forecasting the aggregate behaviour of assets in order to ensure adequate availability of reserves
• exploring how services could be stacked between SO and non-SO services to optimise asset value while behaving complementarily to system needs
• understanding data sharing requirements between aggregators and the SO in order to anticipate asset behaviour