Project SYNC (Solar Yield Network Constraints)

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Solar Energy, Photovoltaics)
Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution)
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts)

Applied Research and Development

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Economics and Econometrics)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Sociology)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Consumer attitudes and behaviour)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Other sociological economical and environmental impact of energy)

Project Contact
Western Power Distribution

Network Innovation Allowance

Ofgem

01 September 2015

01 February 2018

29 months

£864,000

Power

South West

Network Innovation Allowance

Project Contact, Western Power Distribution

The objectives of the trial are to validate the following: Customers can be incentivised to alter their behaviour to manage operational issues arising from excess embedded generation. DR can be used as a reliable and economic alternative to manage generation constraints. Generation can be adequately absorbed through customer behaviour changes to address immediate issues and potentially facilitate further connections. Which methods of operation and customer proposition are most successful at achieving the above? Develop contracts, processes, skills and systems to manage the above trials along with potential migration path to business as usual if. Compatibility of DR Service / incentives with Energy Storage developers. Establish is adequate consumer flexibility exists to have a meaningful impact on generation constraints. Identify compatibility or conflicts that such a scheme may have with TO, SO & market. The success criteria will be assessed over four key performance indicators: Development of suitable proposition to present to customers along with associated contracts and public engagement collateral. Engagement of appropriate I&C customers with the ability to have the desired impact on network loads through behaviour change. Demonstrable improvement in the currently experienced issues including high voltage, reverse power, power factor and thermal constraints. The services tested offer comparable or improved performance over conventional reinforcement Speed of deployment Reliability Better value for consumers

WPD is faced with an immediate and growing challenge in its South West region where adoption of distributed renewable generation has a significant destabilising impact on the network at various voltage levels. Problems include voltage rise through to reverse power flows at 11kV & 33kV. This also has a serious limiting effect in permitting any further generation to be connected to the network even with additional management provided by WPD’s new alternative connections policies. Furthermore the linkage between the issues being experienced at Distribution level and the knock on impact upstream to the TO & SO is not yet understood. WPD will develop a new DR (Demand Response) programme in the affected areas to test the impact of: Reducing generation output Increasing Customer Demand These actions will be tested using a number of different incentives and methodologies: Automated demand increase / generation limiting in line with variation in solar yields Predetermined mandatory periods where a minimum demand threshold needs to be exceeded or generation limited Manually dispatched response signals from a WPD control facility Creation of suitable ToU (Time of Use) tariffs These actions will be contracted and incentivised using different mechanisms, such as: DUoS variations Pay as you go Annual offsetting of standing charges or advance benefit on connection setup Penalties for under performanceNote : Project Documents may be available via the ENA Smarter Networks Portal using the Website link above

29/10/18