National Grid Electricity System Operator
National Grid TO Innovation Team
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Modelling
£12,000,000.00
This project is a combination of strategic projects being carried out largely by
university groups as part of major strategic collaborations. Projects are
supported under EU funding, Electricity Supply Research (ESR) network funding
and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding in
conjunction with contributions from international utilities. The projects focus on
understanding the potential of techniques or technologies to impact the electricity
Transmission network.
The project will look at the following areas:
Electricity Supply Network: Projects areas currently being monitored by
National Grid through the network include Knowledge Discovery from On-line
Cable Condition Monitoring Systems – Insulation Degradation and Aging
Diagnostics (Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Strathclyde),
Energy Efficient Cities (University of Cambridge), Development of Transformer and Fault Current Limiter for High Power DC Networks (University of Aberdeen)
and Energy Loss Study for AC Excited Superconducting Coils (University of
Cambridge).
Forecasting Average Circuit Reliability: One of the key metrics for
understanding network unreliability is the Average Circuit Unreliability. It has
been reported as in internal KPI for many years and is also fundamental to the
annual Regulatory Reporting Pack submission. It describes % network
unavailability as a result of asset unreliability (outages related to faults, defects
and failures etc). As part of the Network Output Measures methodology there is
a requirement to forecast Average Circuit Unreliability. The present techniques
are embryonic and limited to just a year’s forecast.
The KTN for Industrial Mathematics, acting as an agent of EPSRC, receives an
annual allocation of funding for Industrial Mathematics Internships for short
projects to support postgraduate researchers working on industrial-academic
collaborations in mathematics. An Internship involves a high calibre PhD student
taking time off from their studies and joining a company for a period of 3 to 6
months to work on a stand-alone project specified by a company. This project is
co-funded with EPSRC, who will fund 50% of the student’s stipend. The project
for National Grid will involve developing a more sophisticated forecast technique
for the Average Circuit Unreliability metric.
Modelling and control of AC-DC system with significant generation from
Wind: In 2008 alone 2000 MW of new wind capacity was connected to the UK
grid. With further 6000 MW under construction and 10,000 MW under planning
stage in the first round, the UK transmission system in the next 5-10 years is
going to face unprecedented operational challenges. The challenges are
envisaged to be contributed by many factors such as locations, characteristics of
new generation and planned retirement of more and more centralised
synchronous generations.
As majority of the wind uptake is going to be in North West of Scotland and
demand growth will still be dominated in the down south in England, secured
transfer of the energy is going to be a major problem across the Scotland-
England inter connector which is already stability limited.
The Development of an Equivalent Power Network Model for HVDC Studies: To assess the performances of the DC system under various operation
conditions and assess the influence of the HVDC transmission on system
security and AC network performance.
Transmission Tower Field Testing and analysis: Following previous work
there is an understanding of the uplift capacity of National Grid's existing
transmission tower foundations under steady state and dynamic loading
conditions.