Our project partners
Distributed ReStart was a three-way partnership which brought together the expertise of National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), SP Energy Networks (SPEN) and TNEI (a specialist energy consultancy).
Ofgem provided £10.3 million of the project’s total budget of £11.7 million, with the balance of £1.4 million shared between the partners.
You can find out more about National Grid ESO on the who we are section of our website.
SP Energy Networks
SP Energy Networks (SPEN) is a licensed electricity distribution network operator (DNO) for central and southern Scotland and parts of England and north Wales. SPEN also operates the transmission network in central and southern Scotland.
Visit the SPEN website
TNEI
TNEI is an independent specialist energy consultancy. It offers a range of skills tailored to the challenges and opportunities associated with increased distributed renewable generation, and the integration of low carbon technology.
Visit the TNEI website
Project description
Distributed ReStart demonstrated a world first by coordinating distributed energy resources (DER) for a “bottom-up” approach to an electricity system restoration service.
Electricity system restoration is currently a “top-down” transmission-led service using large fossil fuel generators, like coal-fired power stations, to restart the transmission network.
DERs include renewable sources of energy like:
DERs provide a cleaner and greener alternative to large fossil fuel generators. Although the scale of production for DERs is typically smaller, their enormous growth on distribution networks presents an opportunity to co-ordinate an electricity system restoration service using renewables.
The key challenge for the project was how to bring the organisational coordination, the commercial and regulatory frameworks, and the power engineering solutions together to achieve an electricity system restoration from DERs.
Project delivery
The project has successfully met all its agreed objectives and deliverables.
Our Closedown Report shows that project has not only successfully delivered on all 10 of its objectives as defined and agreed in our Project Direction but has also gone further than originally scoped. This included the build and test of a Distribution Restoration Zone Controller (DRZC) prototype that allows for automation of the creation and stabilisation of a local power island.
The project delivered across all the main workstreams and has produced several key outputs as per the NIC bid requirements and our delivery criteria.
These key outputs are fully described in detail in our Final Findings and Proposals report.