Accelerating electricity transmission infrastructure deployment

On the 4th of August, the UK’s Electricity Networks Commissioner, Nick Winser CBE, published his recommendations on accelerating the electricity transmission deployment.

In this short article, PSC UK’s Christopher Smith , Technical Director HVDC, and Liam Feeney , Senior Manager Strategic Advisory, consider the key points relating to high voltage engineering, asset management and digital strategies.

The Great Britain (GB) Electricity Transmission system needs to evolve towards decarbonization by delivering 50GW of wind power and up to 4GW of new nuclear by 2030. The report provides fourteen recommendations that would reduce development timescales for new transmission from twelve to fourteen years to seven years.

A core theme running throughout is the need for more strategic planning highlighted via the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) recommendation, and more active Government and Regulator oversight. This will necessitate anticipatory investment into the network. By delivering a clear plan to the industry this will allow the acute supply chain constraints to be addressed. This article published in the Financial Times provides an example of supply chain constraints.

The development of Electricity Transmission Design Principles (ETDP), which would provide a baseline for which type of asset is appropriate for different environments, would allow the opportunity for greater standardization. This could have major benefits in design, development, consenting and optimizing manufacturing, construction time, and cost. It would also allow owner-operators to apply a standard asset management strategy and plan to a group of assets, moving away from today’s bespoke builds into something more manageable from an operational perspective.

As the report indicates, data is a critical asset in developing and integrating major infrastructure. Data is generally commercially sensitive, so sharing this data can become a bottleneck. An example of a key technical data set that is critical to understand is the control systems operation of power electronics, be that within renewable generation or in High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology.?The ability to share this data, which has significant intellectual property attached to it, is critical to allow power system studies experts to investigate and mitigate any interaction risks.

Data curation and data structures are also non-standard across the industry. Without cross-industry leadership, inefficiencies in major net-zero infrastructure projects' planning and delivery stages will remain. Without a whole system approach to this key aspect of the asset lifecycle, the industry will not meet its net-zero targets. The industry has begun to pivot towards the digital age, but the structures and foundations to enable this are in their infancy.

Finally, the report mentions several times that digitization can be a key enabling technology to facilitate greater information flow and hence flexibility in operations in what will become an even more dynamic market. Such digitization can be deployed to gain greater insights into how assets are operated and maintained efficiently. Projects such as the Network Event & Alarm Transparency project clearly indicate the benefits of such work.

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