Introduction: Understanding the impact on future network capacity as result of the penetration of low carbon technologies.

Objectives: As part of the Government’s Carbon Plan there is an expectation that there will be a significant increase in the volume of low carbon demand and generation sources connected to the distribution network. The majority of the work undertaken in this area has focused on the GWh impact, rather than the impact on system peak demand. It is the latter which drives investment in new network capacity. In addition the majority of studies in this area have been at a national level rather than at DNO level and hence it has been difficult to understand the regional impacts of low carbon technologies.

UK Power Networks has collaborated with Element Energy to develop an integrated top-down scenario planning tool which can be applied at the DNO level. The tool combines the UK Power Networks approach for modelling traditional load growth (i.e. domestic and commercial growth), with a number of low carbon technology models developed by Element Energy. The purpose of the model was to understand the overall impact on system peak demand for a range of economic and low carbon transition scenarios for each of our licence areas. The work is complementary to the Smart Grid Forum work but will provide the more detailed analysis required for investment planning