Event overview

Energy networks are vitally important enablers for the UK energy sector and therefore UK industry and society. Energy networks have a key role to play in achieving the goals set out in the UK government’s Industrial Strategy, most notably in terms of the clean growth aspects. Energy networks exist primarily to exploit and facilitate temporal and spatial diversity in energy production and use and to exploit economies of scale where they exist. The energy trilemma (energy security, environmental impact and social cost) presents many complex interconnected challenges which reach beyond the UK and have huge relevance internationally. These challenges vary considerably from region to region due to historical, geographic, political, economic and cultural reasons. As technology and society changes so do these challenges, and therefore the planning, design and operation of energy networks needs to be revisited and optimised. Current energy networks research and practices do not fully embrace a whole systems approach and is therefore not developing a deep enough understanding of the interconnected and interdependent nature of energy network infrastructure. The recent development of local energy systems and global energy internet bring further uncertainties and challenges to the development of our energy systems.

There is a lack of modelling experience and skills in this area, a lack of replicable models, a shortage of commercial software and a lack of awareness of the value of integrated multi-energy networks in the UK, in order to understand better the linkages among different energy vector networks, ICT, policy, markets, and risk; shape the future energy development; and understand how external factors which may lead to significant change in the way we expect energy networks to be planned and operated. With an excellent line-up of invited participants, this one-day workshop shared current best practices in multi-energy system modelling and discussed how to address the barriers and identifying the innovation gaps.

This invitation-only workshop took place on 12th April 2019 at Imperial College London.  It was jointly organised by INCOSE UK Energy Systems Interest Group and the EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub, with support from Energy Systems Catapult and the UK Energy Research Centre.

Presentations:

• Dr N Mansor BEIS presentation (PDF: 0.8MB)
• C Clarke WWU Presentation (PDF: 4.4MB)
• M Barrett UCL presentation (PDF: 5.7MB)
• Dr S Walker Newcastle presentation (PDF: 1.3MB)
• M Qadrdan Cardiff presentation (PDF: 2.6MB)

Full Meeting Notes: 

Workshop on Modelling of Integrated Multi-Energy Networks - Full Notes

Markets and Regulation play a critically important role in facilitating the development of intelligent, efficient, adaptive and open energy networks within which both existing and new energy players can profit.  This requires continued innovation in commercial and regulatory frameworks that promotes whole-system efficiency, resilience to withstand major societal, technical and environmental shifts.

This workshop took place on 14^th May 2019 at the London campus of the University of Bath.  The meeting was attended by representatives from major energy providers, the regulator Ofgem, and academics with expertise in the energy sector. 

Aims:

This workshop aimed to support the Hub in setting the broad research direction in Markets and Regulation for energy networks. The intention was to bring together key stakeholders from the energy industry to achieve the following key objectives:

• identify short and long term issues in the current markets and regulation in delivering low cost, low carbon and adaptive energy systems
• prioritise the short-term and long-term market and regulatory issues in the UK
• identify possible approaches for knowledge exchange and for the industry and regulator to support and assess academic research

 Topics included: 

• key limitations with the current commercial and regulatory arrangements – industry and academic views
• identifying emerging research challenges, and the future direction of the research for the Hub
• identify collaboration strategies between industry and the academic Hub

Outcomes: 

The key outcomes from the workshop will form a white paper to inform the government and the industrial and academic communities on the key challenges faced in markets and regulation of future energy networks, and the research approaches proposed to tackle them.

Presentations: 

C Harris npower presentation
M Polletti Ofgem presentation
M Pollitt University of Cambridge presentation
N Turvey Western Power Distribution presentation 

Full Meeting Notes: 

Industrial Partnership Workshop full meeting notes