- Ofgem approves approximately £95.3m of investment for ten
innovative projects, focused on clean heat and zero emission
transport, data and digitalisation, and whole system
integration
- Investment includes £49.1m for hydrogen related projects
along with major grants for other innovative gas and electricity
projects
- The projects have gained funding following earlier
feasibility study and proof of concept work.
Ten trailblazing projects have secured £95.3m of funding in a
significant step forward in the drive for decarbonised and
affordable energy.
The ten ‘demonstrator’ projects have secured funding under
Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), delivered in partnership
with Innovate UK, which aims to help accelerate the transition to
more homegrown, decarbonised energy at the lowest cost to
consumers and turn Great Britain into a global centre for energy
innovation.
The projects are led by energy networks, working with a range of
partners in research, technology and innovation. Projects being
developed include technologies that will enable more
flexible use of energy, AI (artificial intelligence) and weather
data systems to predict energy network risks and faults and
circuit breakers that enable the increasing amounts of power
generated by offshore wind to be connected to the grid more
efficiently.
Approximately £49.1m is going to projects exploring hydrogen
related technologies. These include £33.3m of funding for
National Gas Transmission led work to adapt existing gas
compression units for use with hydrogen, to enable it to be fed
into networks. A further £9.9m of funding has been allocated to
investigate the viability of using hydrogen to fuel heavy
duty transportation.
The chosen projects have all shown a real potential to be
widely adopted, helping to transform Great Britain’s energy
systems in line with Government net zero targets and benefit
consumers in the coming years. To maximise consumer benefit and
minimise risk, recipients of this final stage of the SIF process,
have all passed through a rigorous selection process. Funding for
the project is also provided incrementally and is dependent on
key milestones being met.
Marzia Zafar, Deputy Director of Digitalization & Innovation
at Ofgem, said:
“To achieve our target of clean power by 2035 we need to look
across the board for innovative solutions that will deliver
resiliency, reliability and affordability at pace.
“Our work with Innovate UK empowers innovators through SIF
funding and creates a launch pad for development of the
transformative technologies which will help drive forward the
energy transition at least cost to consumers.”
The CrowdFlex project, led by National Grid ESO, aims to further
explore household energy flexibility as a national resource to
help decarbonisation. Flexibility over when and how energy is
used can help align demand to generation, improve coordination
across the network and reduce stress on the system, while
reducing consumer energy bills via incentives. Working with
partners including Amazon Web Services, Octopus Energy and OVO
Energy, the project aims to build a forecasting model of domestic
demand and flexibility, based on large-scale consumer trials,
with the objective of establishing flexibility as a resource and
informing new product design.
Carolina Tortora, Head of Digital Transformation & Innovation
Strategy, National Grid ESO said:
“We believe there is a huge opportunity during this transition to
build a smart flexible energy system by enabling consumers to act
as a new source of flexibility, supporting more low-carbon
technologies and reducing consumer costs. The CrowdFlex
demonstrator is a major step towards a national domestic
flexibility programme.”
The Digital Platform for Leakage Analytics project, led by Cadent
with Guidehouse as technology delivery partner, aims to
demonstrate a prototype for how data, analytics and innovative
sensors can be used to identify, locate, and predict gas leaks in
the gas distribution network. The system will enable Cadent
colleagues to receive real-time alerts about critical leaks, more
accurately analyse and model leakage data across the network and
take quick and effective action. With a vital role to
transport gas over hundreds of miles of pipeline, reducing
leakage remains a continual focus. The DPLA project will now
deliver major advancements in the industry’s ability to monitor
and reduce leakage from gas networks. This will not only
contribute to net zero goals by reducing leakage-related
emissions but will also help to reduce costs for customers.
Matt Hastings, Deputy Director of the Ofgem SIF programme at
Innovate UK, said:
“It is exciting to see these Beta projects, after showing their
potential, moving on to demonstrate their energy innovations in
the real world. Net zero is the most urgent issue of our
lifetime, and the SIF and the energy networks have moved fast to
develop these ideas into large-scale demonstrators in less than
18 months from initial proposals. They have the potential to
deliver big savings in costs and carbon emissions in the coming
years.
“The SIF has already funded more than 100 innovative projects
since 2022, and we encourage more innovators to come forward with
great ideas that could become the transformative technologies of
tomorrow.”
The ten projects announced today received ‘Beta funding’, the
final stage in the SIF’s first programme round which began in
2022 with ‘Discovery’ feasibility studies followed by ‘Alpha’
proof of concept projects.
The Strategic Innovation Fund is a five-year programme with up to
£450m available to promote energy network innovation. It’s second
round of projects is well underway with 53 feasibility studies
just having completed their initial Discovery Phase. A third
round is due to open for feasibility study proposals in the
autumn of 2023.
