Resilience Flexible Funding
Funding was awarded to 3 research projects, at a total cost of awards of £311,896. This followed a competitive round of Flex Fund applications from researchers across the UK. The standard of applications was very high with an excellent cross-vector response.
University of Strathclyde
Credible routes to GB electricity system collapse and the impact of new demand
A large, interconnected electricity system allows sharing of generation reserves, has high energy market liquidity, and provides access to the best renewable energy resources. While experience shows that the reliability of supply from such a system is high, there is typically at least one major electricity system collapse somewhere in the world every year.
The interdisciplinary team built on previous work to (1) Better understand issues related to system collapse pathways previously determined through structured interviews to be most likely and (2) Implemented system modelling to assess issues highlighted in the interviews.
University of Reading
CLEARHEADS: CLimate-Energy modelling for Assessing Resilience –HEAt Decarbonisation and the Northwest European Supergrid
Climate change is a major challenge for energy system resilience. On the one hand, heat decarbonisation moves weather-driven demand from gas to electrical networks; on the other, increasing penetration of renewables adds weather-sensitivity to electricity supply. These challenges are further exacerbated by a changing climate. Transnational transmission systems offer a solution by connecting energy resources and loads across countries, but this additional resilience cannot be easily quantified by existing methods. Using an innovative combination of two data-driven methodologies, this project will quantify the resilience of interconnected systems by combining expertise in climate science with probabilistic models of energy demand (including electrification of heat), generation, and transnational energy flows. It will also leave a legacy of improved access to a suite of state-of-the-art high-resolution future climate simulations for use in wider energy-systems modelling applications.
University of Strathclyde
A real time resilience assessment framework for integrated energy systems in future UK cities
Net-Zero strategies for UK cities present immediate requirements for integrated whole-system approaches. Quantified assessments of resilience levels are critical to ensure secure and reliable operation of future Integrated Energy Systems (IES). While significant efforts to identify resilience indices have been made, existing activities typically focus on offline resilience assessments, largely neglecting the impact of real-time system dynamics, measurements and other online data/contextual information. This could under- or over-estimate risks, thus contributing to significant system failures, e.g. the GB power outage in 2019. To combat such risks and catalyse coherent approaches to energy systems planning, this project will establish a new real-time resilience assessment framework (covering survivability and decarbonisation) resilience for multi-vector IES. The framework will employ critical IES system data and online measurements to assess and quantify real-time, emerging and predicted IES risks/weakness, so that local authorities and system operators can take proactive actions, and potentially refine system design/operation. Glasgow City will be used as a case study, and learning will be translated and disseminated for wider application to other UK cities. An online open platform for visualising and sharing energy system monitoring data to public and research communities will also be delivered.
Latest
