SOLUTIONS FOR FUTUREPROOFING GRID CONNECTIONS ROUND TABLE REVIEW 47
Hadley adds: “It tells the concentrator and all the properties on the development, how much power is being pulled, and if there is enough power in the grid to cater for it at that time.” Most of the time there won’t be an issue, he says, but there will be when peaks occur when it’s freezing, meaning heat pumps working overtime, and EVs are draining batteries, or solar panels are putting power back into the grid in summer and “it hasn’t got the transmission or the back end to cope with that input.” DynamiX steps in: “When peak demand hits, and there’s not enough power, it will tell all the meters to draw down the power on the low carbon tech, so we’re reducing the impact.”
He gave the example of EV chargers which may be working at
7.5 kW, but DynamiX would “potentially pull them down to six, and it will keep them there until there’s enough power available from the grid.”
Delegates were keen to quiz Hadley on the system’s potential,
fi rstly Dan Neasham who asked whether E.ON was “integrating with those technologies to control them, and whether they had “a pre-approved list.” He said they were “working through all of them, and some manufacturers are already confi rmed,” under the relevant IT control protocols for the respective technologies (such as eBUS or modbus for heat pumps). “We have created it so the protocols can talk to each other, through power line tech not Wi Fi, because the stability is really important.” Hadley also confi rmed, in response to a question from Tobias
Burke, that the ‘primary contracting partner’ on the consumer side would be either the IDNO or DNO in each case, who “had to accept the technology in each home.” Burke advocated it being included into “proactive plans before we even build out into new areas,” and Hadley said E.ON was currently doing this as an Independent Connection Provider, in projects “up to 132 kW today, including commercial as well as residential.” With the fi rm also soon to also be operating as an IDNO, it will be “automatically happy” to adopt DynamiX as well as install it. Ultimately, concludes Hadley, this move sees E.ON “trying to innovate and fi nd ways to help residential developers to overcome the problems that they’re seeing effectively; it’s a bridge until the grid catches up.”
Delegates discussed whether substations could be made to run ‘hotter’ in order to provide the greater capacity that was needed. Laurence Johnson said that developers “are allowed to massively diversify and manage that load if you have a mechanism, and if the ICP (Independent Connection Provider) and DNO/IDNO can accept that and the associated risk.” There was some agreement around the benefi ts of avoiding further ‘upstream reinforcement’ by going this route.
John Hadley said that the “point of DynamiX is to be involved at the design stage of a development, with the IDNO in the room.” Ben Tibbett put the consumers’ perspective in the scenario of lower voltages potentially coming into properties with managing peak demand, asking “if you’re now reducing the amount of electricity coming in, what is my consumer right if nothing seems to be on or [the heating] seems to be so low?”
Hadley explained that the impact on EV charging would not
be “major,” but might be “different” with heat pumps due to the comfort factor. However, said Hadley, “half of the kilowatts in a heat pump is backup heating, which is modulated. DynamiX will work with that modulation, and won’t switch the heat pump off.” He added: “In that scenario, you’d
always prioritise the heat pump over the EV charger.” Representing Electrical Safety First, Luke Osborne asked whether
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DynamiX was suitable for domestic retrofi t or refurbishments. Hadley admitted that it was “a new build solution fi rst and foremost,” given the volume of new build the industry is expected to provide. However, he added that with existing power infrastructure, there are pockets of excess power available.” He reiterated that because the system sits on the LV side of a substation, “you don’t need to switch off the infrastructure on a retrofi t.” Hadley also cautioned there were challenges with retrofi t, such as going to the existing DNO, and homeowners being reluctant to accept imposed grid constraints. Lastly, Laurence Johnson made the comment that the load calculation of a scheme, in the context of using DynamiX, “would need to be known very very early on in a development.” And Luisa Mostarda of Savills concluded that from her experience with developers, they “are going to accept a much more forward thinking solution, because otherwise nothing is going to get developed.”
Conclusion In the end, the success of E.ON’s solution, although representing an innovative and pragmatic offer for housebuilders, will depend on gaining the traction and trust among consumers which sees it widely adopted. This means that it will need to be carefully calibrated in order to make sure that it provides the fl exibility which is required to assist the grid as decarbonisation intensifi es. In this way it could mitigate the huge impacts of electrifi cation of housing, required for resilience as we move towards net zero, but done in a way that rules out power blackouts.
Our round table delegates agreed there was a need to unblock regulatory barriers to be able to see a wide rollout of more innovative solutions for fl exing the grid, and making the 1.5 million homes target more viable. With SME housebuilders particularly struggling around the electricity demand issue, with many other voices advocating for their case to be a priority, such common- sense approaches harnessing tech to enable developments to move forward could be the silver bullet. However, while the solutions exist, as Laurence Johnson of Hoare Lea succinctly put it, “energy has to be valued in a different way” before the fl exible approaches required for managing a constrained grid going forward will be realised. He said that rather than seeing residential developments as a burden, such a shift could see them as “a credit to the grid if they work smartly” (such as by harnessing EV charging more widely). While he said this kind of “dynamic thinking” was “a long way off,” a ‘four C’s’ approach of valuing energy could be used as a focus for projects – Cost, Capacity, Community and Carbon. Balancing these at the administrative level will help free up thinking to enable the kind of solutions that E.ON is offering to be truly mainstreamed.
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