ESO Innovation Strategy

What are we aiming to achieve?

Competition everywhere, with greater market participation on the supply and demand-side, including all participant types and sizes. As consumers transition from a passive to a more active role in their energy usage with the uptake of smart technologies, we must identify how to best facilitate their participation in our markets.

What is informing our approach?

As we transform to a zero-carbon electricity system, it is increasingly important to explore markets for new services that can meet changing system needs, as well as markets for new products. It is also critical that we facilitate a level playing field for all participants, both traditional and emerging to further promote competition.

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

How to remove barriers to new and existing markets for smaller participants and new technology types?

What effective new market modelling tools can we use to assess future market designs and interactions?

What new potential consumer markets are out there? What are their technical characteristics and entry conditions?

What are we aiming to achieve?

Optimised management of networks across transmission and distribution with minimal curtailment of renewable generation and at minimum overall cost to consumers.

What is informing our approach?

Understanding the risk of constraints occurring and managing these effectively is becoming increasingly difficult due to more uncertainties in supply and demand patterns. If constraints can’t be avoided or managed in the most efficient way, costs for consumers can increase dramatically.

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

How can long-term energy storage (electrochemical, thermal, or mechanical) reduce year-round constraints?

Can low-carbon hydrogen production be appropriately sited at advantageous locations to reduce constraints?

How can we use data and new technologies to either increase transfer initially, or provide a fast acting, automated response to a system condition?

What are we aiming to achieve?

A holistic, integrated view across all energy vectors and sectors that supports efficient and effective system planning, development and operation.

What is informing our approach?

The ongoing conversation around the decarbonisation of heat and transport, combined with electricity systems’ increased reliance on gas for flexibility (particularly on the distribution networks), present us with a crucial opportunity to consider the energy system as a whole, across multiple vectors (i.e. electricity and the multiple gas types) and the sectors this supports (e.g. heat, power, transport, industry).

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

How can we model the whole energy system across all sectors and incorporate this into our work with FES, NOA, and Early Competition?

Hydrogen impacts assessment, feasibility studies, and modelling

What flexibility services can be created for the electricity network as other sectors decarbonise?

What are we aiming to achieve?

Safe, reliable and secure operation of a zero-carbon electricity system by 2025

What is informing our approach?

Synchronous generation supports the stability of the system. As we transform to a zero-carbon electricity system, synchronous generation capacity is decreasing, and the system is becoming less stable. This results in faster system frequency changes, less voltage and fault ride-through stability, and makes it more difficult for both synchronous and non-synchronous generators to operate safely.

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

How can we best model stability in an increasingly non-synchronous system?

How can we speed up some of our processes, or automate them in order to keep up with a lower inertia system?

Understand the behaviour of new technologies and their impact on the system, e.g. Virtual Synchronous Machines, V2G, etc. to support their participation in future Stability Pathfinder procurement.

What are we aiming to achieve?

Sophisticated and accurate energy forecasting in both operational and planning timescales.

What is informing our approach?

This considers both, short as well as long term forecasting. Lack of visibility of intermittent embedded generation on electricity networks, combined with more complex usage patterns, makes short-term forecasting of electricity supply and demand increasingly difficult.

Long-term supply and demand forecasting are becoming harder to carry out as new technologies and global market forces emerge.

These could lead to dramatically different end-user behaviours.

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

How do new types of consumer demand (EVs, electric heat) actually behave during normal operation? What do their demand profiles look like for different demographics?

How can we better understand the impact of forecast error on control room actions?

How can we further integrate AI, ML, and big data techniques into our forecasting processes?

What are we aiming to achieve?

Efficient and effective planning and operation across transmission and distribution.

What is informing our approach?

New decentralised energy resources are connecting to distribution networks, turning them into active networks and transforming the role of Distribution Network Operators. Many of these new resources can provide valuable services to us, increasing competition in our markets as well as to those of emerging Distribution System Operators (DSOs).

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

Joint innovation projects to solve issues affecting both transmission and distribution networks though Regional Development Programmes.

How can new markets providing distribution network flexibility work efficiently alongside transmission level markets?

Can we build more complex whole system models which incorporate both ESO and DSO data?

What are we aiming to achieve?

Ability to restore GB from total or partial shutdown, with zero carbon sources, by 2025, at minimum cost to consumers.

What is informing our approach?

The availability of conventional Black Start service providers will decrease as part of the shift away from conventional thermal generation. New solutions are needed to ensure that we can maintain, and improve on, our capability to restore the system.

What are some of the opportunities for innovation?

Continue to deliver Distributed Restart to facilitate Black Start from DER and address any issues this might uncover.

Testing automated controllers and end-to-end telecoms on the live power system.