We are pleased to announce the recent publication in the International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems


‘An interdisciplinary research perspective on the future of multi-vector energy networks’

Abstract:
Understanding the future of multi-vector energy networks in the context of the transition to net zero and the energy trilemma (energy security, environmental impact and social cost) requires novel interdisciplinary approaches. 

A variety of challenges regarding systems, plant, physical infrastructure, sources and nature of uncertainties, technological in general and more specifically Information and Communication Technologies requirements, cyber security, big data analytics, innovative business models and markets, policy and societal changes, are critically important to ensure enhanced flexibility and higher resilience, as well as reduced costs of an integrated energy system.

Integration of individual energy networks into multi-vector entities opens a number of opportunities, but also presents a number of challenges requiring interdisciplinary perspectives and solutions. Considering drivers like societal evolution, climate change and technology advances, this paper describes the most important aspects which have to be taken into account when designing, planning and operating future multi-vector energy networks.

For this purpose, the issues addressing future architecture, infrastructure, interdependencies and interactions of energy network infrastructures are elaborated through a novel interdisciplinary perspective.

Aspects related to optimal operation of multi-vector energy networks, implementation of novel technologies, jointly with new concepts and algorithms, are extensively discussed.

The role of policy, markets and regulation in facilitating multi-vector energy networks is also reported. Last but not least, the aspects of risks and uncertainties, relevant for secure and optimal operation of future multi-vector energy networks are discussed.

The full paper is available to view.

We will be hosting the free to attend Supergen Energy Networks conference in the Royal Academy of Engineering, London, from 5-7 September 2023.

Date/Time: 05/09/2023 – 07/09/2023

Venue: Royal Academy of Engineering, Prince Philip House, 3 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DG

The free to attend conference will celebrate our successes within phase 1 of Supergen, as well as looking forward to the next 5 years. The 5th September will have development sessions for ECR’s, with the main conference starting on the 6th September. There will be a drinks and canapes reception on the evening of the 6th September for those who would like to attend. Registration is open now! Please signup using the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/w78i1dWVbU

8th March 2023

The EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub Risk and Resilience Day contiuned the tradition of the previous Durham Risk Day series (2010-2014), an annual seminar for researchers involved in all aspects of risk and uncertainty analysis applied to current and future power and energy systems. 

For further information visit the Risk & Resilience Website or email: riskday@manchester.ac.uk

#EmbraceEquality

Newcastle University colleagues share their thoughts on #embraceequity International Women’s Day 2023

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, it is important to reflect on the progress made towards gender equality and recognise the work that still needs to be done. The theme for International Women’s Day this year is #embraceequity.

The difference between equality and equity is subtle yet important. Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources or opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Equity is vital as it recognises that everybody starts from different places in life, and if we embrace equity, it promotes inclusion and diversity in everything we do.

For International Women’s Day, we asked our colleagues three questions:

We used the responses from the first two questions to create a word cloud, pictured in Figure 1.

“I encouraged a female PhD student to apply for a doctoral prize fellowship which she would not otherwise have considered. She successfully won the fellowship, and it has kickstarted her post-doctoral research career.”

“I had an intern helping me who was a single parent doing her bachelor’s degree and I was happy for her work hours to be flexible around her and made the effort to find her extra funding to continue the work further.”

“I was a mentor to a teenage girl through the Girls Network and hope that I supported my mentee even in small ways to realise her potential as a young woman.”

“A recent funding application was undertaken anonymously and lead to a 50/50 gender split, even age split with more ECRs and more ethnic diversity. All of these attributes help to create a more diverse and positive research culture.”

“In an event me and a few friends were running, we decided to dedicate performance slots to female artists after having male dominated line-ups for a long time. We received a positive response from our female attendees, discovered some great artists and the opportunities have helped several of the artists progress their music careers.”

One of the biggest barriers to equity is the cost of childcare, which disproportionately effects women with children as they are typically the primary care givers. We acknowledge all responses received in our survey and are aware of challenges and barriers that are present. Our colleagues and the processes that are implemented are continuously being improved to ensure that all voices are heard. It is important to challenge behaviour that unfairly discriminates against anyone in the workplace. We hope that our anonymous survey will encourage others to share their stories in the future, as well as embracing the benefits and barriers of embracing equity that exist.

See here for more inspirational stories.

#IWD2023 #EmbraceEquity

Net zero, the target of reducing our emissions by 100% by the year 2050, is a movement which most people know about and support. In a recent government survey, 87% of people had heard of net zero, and 83% reported climate change as a concern. Net zero can be accomplished by reducing our emissions into the atmosphere and increasing the amount of carbon we remove from the atmosphere (Carbon capture), so that they balance out. This process is called decarbonisation. For net zero to be a success, we must decarbonise our energy production, our buildings, our heating, and our transport. Whilst this sounds simple, in practice it is very tricky, as nearly everything we do as a species releases carbon. The average person in the UK has a carbon footprint of about 10 tonnes, meaning that the UK releases around 66 million tonnes of Carbon into the atmosphere every year! If you’re interested in learning more about your carbon footprint and ways to reduce it, check out the WWF Carbon footprint calculator.

How we move to net zero is going to affect people’s lives a lot. Whilst most of the public knows what net zero is and are supportive, less is known about the details. In fact, in the same government survey, only 9% of people said they knew a lot about the topic. This is a problem, as for net zero to be a success, people need to know about it and buy into the mission. Recent events such as the COP 26 meeting in Glasgow has given the movement more publicity. In another survey conducted in November 2021 by the research agency IPSOS, pollution and climate change were found to be Britain’s highest concern, across a range of demographics. However, other issues such as lack of faith in politicians and the economy have since overtaken them. Whilst these are important, we can’t stop thinking about our 2050 target – its only possible if we make radical change now.

The survey
To learn more about the public’s opinions and knowledge on net zero, academics here at Newcastle University recently issued a survey to 830 participants. They made sure that the people used in the survey reflected the general population, or a representative sample. A table showing a breakdown of the sample is found below:

The participants were then asked a series of questions about net zero, as well as some questions about themselves in general. The personal questions allow researchers to investigate whether people of different demographics have different views or levels of knowledge about net zero, which is important as everyone needs to be involved.

Key findings


What does this tell us?

Firstly, the survey suggests that the general public are more clued up on net zero than the investigators thought! It was particularly good to see that knowledge of net zero is relatively consistent across different demographics.

The findings of the survey support the idea that most of the public is behind the net zero goal, especially the mission to phase out fossil fuels. It also highlights that people think most important decisions and behaviour change need to come from government and the energy producers/generators themselves, even though everyone has a part to play. This is called a top-down approach. The findings also highlight that the government and energy companies can do more to educate people about how the journey to net zero will affect everyone. However, it also shows that most people recognise that net zero is everyone’s responsibility, which is fantastic ! If us, the public, can show government and energy companies that net zero is something that we feel passionately about, then we can move towards a greener, more sustainable future together.

The events supported by the EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub include webinars on a range of topics. Recordings of the webinars are available to download following the event.

The Whole Energy Systems Team at Newcastle University have an exciting new list of webinar speakers this Spring.  Talks are held late morning (UTC) every other Thursday.  Details of speakers and dates are below: please register to join the talks:

17th Feb (11am – 12pm UTC)

Prof Mark Barrett and Dr Tiziano Gallo Cassarino, UCL.

“ESTIMO modelling of zero emission energy systems with renewables, storage and interconnector trade – with a focus on heating options”.


3rd March (12pm – 1pm UTC)

 Dr Shandelle Steadman, Cranfield University.

“Local Energy For Sale: An Experimental Analysis of Consumers’ and Prosumers’ Decision-Making in Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading Platforms”.


17th March (11am – 12pm UTC)

Ryan Jenkinson, Centre for Net Zero and Dr Myriam Neaimeh, Alan Turing Institute.

“Designing a grid fit for the future: democratising distribution network analysis with an openly accessible online tool and real-world smart meter data.”


31st March (12pm – 1pm UTC)

Dr Liyang Han, Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

“A regression-based data market for energy systems”. 

Previous Webinars

Past sessions are available to view online

About the Author

Richard Afriyie Oduro is a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds who is jointly appointed by the School of Earth and Environment (SEE), and the School of Chemical and Process Engineering (SCAPE). Richard is working on the policy and society work package of the Supergen Energy Networks Hub’s project on Multi-Vector Energy Networks (MVEN).

Supergen Energy Networks Hub visit to Accra, Ghana (7 – 8th July 2022)
The Supergen Energy Networks Hub (SEN) and Ghana Energy Networks (GEN) (SEN-GEN) workshop, held on the 7-8 July 2022 gathered thirty-one (31) academic and industry stakeholders in the energy network area from the UK and Ghana. The purpose was to promote GEN as a Hub that focuses on energy networks research in Ghana, as well as to formally launch the SEN-GEN collaboration, which was initiated in March 2020, but for which in-person activities had been delayed by the COVID pandemic.

The workshop was designed to encourage greater interactions and collaborations between partners from electricity distribution, transmission, mini-grid operations and development firms, as well as researchers from Ghana and the UK.

Feedback from participants at the workshop was incredibly positive. The workshop met their expectations, and participants would like the SEN-GEN collaboration to grow to provide a bigger platform to facilitate more interactions between industry and academia.

Background of SEN-GEN Collaborations
Ghana Energy Networks (GEN) is an entity formed by the Regional Centre of Excellence in Energy and Sustainability (RCEES) at the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) and The Brew Hammond Energy Centre (TBHEC) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) to focus on energy network infrastructure research across areas such as modelling, regulation and markets, policy, and risk. The Supergen Energy Networks (SEN) Hub is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and is led by six (6) UK universities including Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle, Bath, Cardiff, and Manchester. The focus is on energy network infrastructure research across vectors including electricity, natural gas, heating and cooling, and hydrogen. The SEN Hub explores how an understanding of the interdependencies and interactions between different energy networks can deal with the challenges that they face.

Participating Organisations
Stakeholders participating in the workshop were drawn from across the energy networks area including regulators, policymakers, electricity distribution companies, electricity transmission companies, mini-grid developers and operators. Other stakeholders included academic institutions and consultancies working on energy networks. Apart from the main collaborators, the organisations that participated included Energy Commission, Ministry of Energy, Northern Electricity Distribution Company, Electricity Company of Ghana, Volta River Authority, Bui Power Authority, and Ghana Grid Company. There were also participants from University of Mines and Technology, Morks Reid Global, and Deloitte.

Presentations
The agenda on the first day covered six areas: a welcome address and background to the SEN-GEN collaboration; overview of the UK and Ghana energy systems; the operation of the energy networks market and regulation in the two countries; networks and data disaggregation; Ghana’s energy transition agenda; and a discussion session on potential areas for future collaboration. The second day focused on energy network management, climate change and energy networks, two demonstration projects, and another discussion session on potential research areas.

Colleagues from the UK spoke on UK energy networks challenges and responses, markets and regulation, data disaggregation, and on the impact of climate change on energy network infrastructure.

Our partners from Ghana gave talks on Ghana’s energy sector, technical regulation of energy networks, electricity distribution in low-income areas, mini-grid developments and operations in island communities, and on Ghana’s energy transition plan.

Further Discussions
The workshop concluded with discussions on next steps and collaboration opportunities between Supergen Energy Networks (SEN) and Ghana Energy Networks (GEN).

A list of short-term and medium-long term research areas were developed, including writing a review and journal paper as well as a report highlighting challenges and opportunities of Energy Networks in Ghana and the possibility to support Early Career Researchers with a 6-month secondment to SEN.

An Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) was also formed to support and review the activities of GEN which will feed into the SEN IAC based in the UK.

On September 17th, the EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub Early Career Researcher Committee hosted an online networking event centred on the topic of “Data in Energy Networks”. The event was run through Gather to make it a bit different to standard online webinars and to enable a bit more freedom and flexibility for participants to strike up conversations with new contacts.

Things kicked off with an excellent opening talk from Dr Stephen Haben from the Energy Systems Catapult, summarising some of the projects that he and The Catapult are working on and ways for researchers to feed into them. Following this, the main topics of conversation in the themed rooms were Strategies and platforms for data sharing and academic-industrial collaboration – the latter being supported and facilitated by some attendees from Arenko.group.

Following the online event, there was even a small gathering for ECRs based in London – for most this was the first face-to-face networking event in well over a year!

The Role of Energy Networks Towards the 2035 Emissions Target

Friday, 3 September

(10:45 – 12:00)

Panellists from Industry and Academia:

Full speaker biographies are available to view.

Xin Zhang works as a Senior Lecturer in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Brunel University London and was recently awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

Transition from Industry to Academia
I worked at National Grid ESO for eight years before I returned to academia as a senior lecturer. My industry work involved in the real-time operation of the UK Electricity Transmission Systems, where I worked on shift patterns with five other shift teams and over a hundred engineers. We worked together to ensure the electricity supply met demand on a second-by-second basis, a core function of a GB Electricity System Operator.

“I am proud to tell my neighbours and friends that I was one of the power system engineers to keep the lights on”

My motivation to move to academic research initiated from a night shift when I was on the energy desk, there was so much wind on the system and the whole system was reaching security limits. I started to think about future technologies and solutions to solve real-time engineering problems. One day, I felt the power systems needed fundamental changes to accommodate more renewables, which has evolved so fast from 5% to almost 50% in the past ten years. Such fundamental change could be the combination of “3D – decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation”, where I was so looking forward to participating in such energy system transitions.

I decided to take up a senior lecturer position in energy systems (future grid) at Cranfield University in April 2019. I remember the last day when I worked in the Electricity National Control Centre, I had finished my night shift at 7:00am and handed over my company budget. I told myself that I have now become a full-time academic researcher.

Research Funding
Changing career from industry to academia is never easy, particularly to establish myself in an academic research environment, where I need to set up my own research team and agenda. Research funding is a key factor to grow and sustain my research activities. In the first six months of my research career, I was lucky enough to receive my first research grant from the Flexible Fund Call from the Supergen Energy Networks Hub.

I went through a competitive funding selection process from project outlines to full proposal development. I was firmly supported by the Supergen Flexible Fund as my start-up grant to recruit my first research assistant, as well as to set up my first PhD student. With this initial support, I managed to publish two important journal papers to establish myself in the field, as well as to successfully secure future research funding including two T-TRIG grants from the Department for Transport, as well as an EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership award.

I worked closely with the Supergen Energy Networks Hub in most of my funding applications as well as research activities. Through the Supergen Energy Networks Hub, I connected with several relevant industrial partners to strengthen my research, I was mentored by several senior Hub members. As an Early Career Researcher (ECR), I particularly valued the networking support from the Supergen Energy Networks Hub through the various hybrid events, including the Industrial Advisory Committee meetings, research webinars and regular Hub meetings in Manchester, Birmingham and London.

“Transiting career from industry to academia is never easy, that’s why I am so glad to receive a prestigious £1.8m UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to make it happen.”

Future Leaders Fellowship
I recently applied for a Future Leaders Fellowship, during the  application process, I was supported by the Hub’s internal proposal review and mock interview, which ensured that I receive the best possible support from the Energy Networks community.

In my project: “Digitalisation of Electrical Power and Energy Systems Operation”,  I will lead the application and development of advanced digital technologies for the energy sector in order to improve the interoperability and whole system reliability of real-time power system operation with up to 100% low-carbon and renewable energy. This will support the digital transformation across electrical power and energy systems in order to achieve the UK’s net-zero emissions target.


The research project associated with my Fellowship will pioneer the development of cyber-physical energy systems modelling methods and co-simulation platform-as-a-service approaches to enhance real-time power system operation. The novel techniques will be deployed with regard to energy management systems in order to enhance the reliability and interoperability at the whole system level across electricity system operators (transmission, distribution and renewables).

Next Steps

I am confident in achieving future leadership in power and energy system digitalisation and leading an internationally-recognised research team supported by 11 industrial partners and research societies including Supergen Energy Networks Hub as a key project partner.

“Future Leaders Fellowships support talented people in universities, businesses, and other research and innovation environments. The aim of the scheme is to develop the next wave of world-class research and innovation leaders in academia and business.”

My Future Leaders Fellowship project will closely link with the Supergen Energy Networks Hub, with a consortium of Universities. Supported by Supergen, I will expand my academic networks with other key stakeholders in the UKRI Energy Programme including the Supergen Programme. This is important to further develop my international influence and new relationships, a key strategy to develop as a future leader in research and innovation.