POWER
ENSURING RESILIENT MANUFACTURING POWER WITH SMART MICROGRID
TECHNOLOGIES Britain is becoming increasingly electrified, with a rapid growth in digitised processes and a renewed government commitment to clean energy. But decentralisation of the nation’s power infrastructure brings fresh concerns over power resilience for UK manufacturers. Approaching winter, when power resilience is most at risk, Stuart Little, business development manager at Powerstar, considers the growing trend towards microgrid solutions to help energy-intensive and advanced manufacturers protect their energy supply while decarbonising their energy mix.
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n its Sixth Carbon Budget, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) predicted that low carbon energy generation would need to be significantly ramped up to meet a 50 per cent increase in demand for electricity by 2035. A growing percentage of this power is coming from renewables, raising questions of energy resilience, since the National Grid was designed on a centralised generation and dispatch model with large-scale power plants feeding into a high-voltage transmission network. For local Distribution Network Operators (DNOs), who must balance customer demands, the increase in smaller-scale power generation at distribution network level creates new pressures, including
the potential for greater power disruption. While these energy security issues were already present when the CCC made their report, more recent government policy announcements bring resilience issues very much to the fore. As Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband highlighted a key priority, “
...to make Britain a clean energy superpower with zero carbon electricity by 2030”. In the July King’s Speech, creating a publicly-owned clean energy company, the Great British Energy Bill assumes that achieving this ambition is, “likely to require at least a doubling of current onshore wind capacity, and a three to fourfold increase in current offshore wind and solar capacity.”
The Energy Bill and government energy policy will further push ahead with the energy transition, with the stated aim of positioning the UK as an energy technology superpower. A crucial strategic objective is to ensure long-term energy security by reducing the UK’s dependence on oil and gas imports: breaking the link by decarbonising the power system. However, British manufacturers still face issues of potential power disruption over the coming winter months, as well as the impact of increasingly decentralised energy generation in the short- and medium-term.
There is significant growth in the global microgrid market, which perhaps indicates that businesses worldwide are choosing to protect their energy infrastructure resilience, while also meeting their own sustainability goals by optimising the use of on-site renewables alongside Grid energy. A recent market report estimates that the microgrid market size of USD 37.6 billion as at 2024 is projected to reach 87.8 billion by 2029.4 The same report indicates that commercial and industrial buildings will show the highest Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) up to 2029. “This surge can be attributed to the imperative for a dependable power supply to ensure uninterrupted operations... Maintaining consistent power flow is essential to minimizing downtime, enhancing productivity, and averting equipment damage. Consequently, the commercial and industrial sectors are increasingly embracing microgrid solutions to fulfil their power requirements.” With this anticipated growth in demand for microgrid solutions, it is helpful to consider some of the benefits of the technology, without
Autumn 2024 UKManufacturing
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