Making the TRANSITION

For the past five years, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks has been running a project, alongside various collaboration, delivery and project partners to look at how energy systems can become smarter and more flexible as we move towards Net Zero.

This project – called TRANSITION – has now ended. What did we learn? And what comes next?

Over these five years, we looked at what the roles and responsibilities within a flexible energy marketplace would look like, while setting out the necessary rules.

In this new world, a Distribution System Operator like SSEN must be an intermediary between energy producers, consumers, and other electricity grid users like councils, local businesses, and community groups.

This means we must be able to streamline energy trading, give access to grid data, and encourage market competition and innovation. We wanted to find the best ways to develop and share services, roles and responsibilities, market rules, and mechanisms. And TRANSITION gave us evidence on how to do this.

If the market for trading energy flexibility between suppliers and networks is to be robust, there need to be legal structures. To establish markets for services that can be both procured and enabled by the DSO, the project set out to provide legal documentation and contracts to ensure a fair, regulated market.

We found simplicity was key in getting more people involved and getting more flexibility into the system.

Contractual mechanisms need to be clear, concise, effective, and accessible, especially for new market entrants or those with smaller Distributed Energy Resources who cannot afford a formal legal review.

Setting a price cap for these services is a crucial component of creating a market for energy flexibility services. One of the TRANSITION project's goals was to look at the current pricing standards set for flexibility services that were able to delay the need to strengthen network infrastructure for more than a year.

Because potential participants told us that the price offered was too low compared to the price they wanted, we increased the price ceiling for flexibility across all services to encourage competition and reliability in the market.

We also established that a platform had to be designed and assessed, so that participants in the market could interact with the DSO through a simple portal. This would let them sign up for, contract for, deliver, and settle services.

What the TRANSITION project put in place showed how the impartial support of a market can make it possible for a wide range of flexible and capacity-building goods and services to be delivered on time.

Then there was the need for a system to keep the market running smoothly, to ensure the right trading contracts are automatically selected. This needed to consider the wide variety of systems needed to predict real-time network requirements.

In response, we developed the Select and Dispatch (S&D) Tool. This enables the automatic selection of contracts for dispatch. The tool completed a number of complex tasks that enabled the automation of contracts and reporting.? The lessons learned will help inform how flexibility is rolled out in the next phase of its development.

The project team also considered how to identify the ways a network could operate in different situations. Network models can give a true picture of how electricity is distributed across a network using different sets of data to show the physical connections for generation, storage and demand.

These models can help create a successful electricity distribution network by looking at the changes brought about by various circumstances. The model we created of the distribution network was across the three voltage levels. It was made using data that already existed, and we found that accurate digital models of the low-voltage network at street level are what’s needed for predictions that can lead to greater use of low carbon technologies.

We followed this by a developing a Power System Analyst (PSA) tool, so we could find network limits and turn them into requirements for flexibility. It helped us figure out network sensitivity factors from potential sources of greater flexibility and allowed us to see if they can solve the problems. The PSA tool made this work easier and clearer.

We’re proud of the outcomes of the TRANSITION project, and the work achieved in partnership with key stakeholders.

It has taught us all so much, and we realise the findings mean different things for different people – so, whether you are a domestic customer or a commercial aggregator, you can view what the outcomes of TRANSITION mean for you here .