What is the Distributed ReStart project?

Latest update

The three-year Distributed ReStart project reached its halfway point in June 2020 and has now entered the demonstration phase. This involves testing the proposed designs at live network trials and with desktop exercises.

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Project description

Distributed ReStart will demonstrate a world first by coordinating Distributed Energy Resources (DER) for a bottom up approach to black start from distribution up to transmission level. Black start is currently a transmission-led service using large fossil fuel generators, like coal-fired power stations, to restart the transmission network.

DER include renewable sources of energy like:

• natural gas turbines
• biomass generators
• embedded hydro-power stations
• wind turbines
• solar panels.

DER provide a cleaner and greener alternative to large fossil fuel generators. Although the scale of production for DER is typically smaller, their enormous growth on distribution networks presents an opportunity to co-ordinate a black start using renewables.

The key challenge for the projectis how to bring the organisational coordination, the commercial and regulatory frameworks, and the power engineering solutions together to achieve black start from DER.

View our approach

Our project partners

Distributed ReStart is a three-way partnership bringing together the expertise of National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), SP Energy Networks (SPEN) and TNEI (a specialist energy consultancy).

Ofgem have provided £10.3 million of the project’s total budget of £11.7 million, with the balance of £1.4 million shared equally between the partners.

You can find out more about what we do here.