Project Summary
Trinity aims to address the increasing complexity faced by control room staff due to the Net Zero transition, benefiting both electricity network operators and their customers. Such complexity poses risks of prolonged disruption, suboptimal capital allocation, and network inefficiency that can impact customer satisfaction and the overall energy system.
Delivering control room simulator facilities enhances network operators' abilities to handle conflicts, manage uncertain demand and generation, maintain system resilience, develop new capabilities, and test regulatory policies and innovative solutions outside of nationally critical and stringently controlled production systems. Ultimately, Trinity improves the service for customers increasingly reliant on electricity networks.
Innovation Justification
The project will lay the groundwork for a digital twin of the electricity distribution network: a fully integrated network simulator which moves the control room away from reactive towards proactive planning and incident response, becoming an indispensable tool to design and test the network of the future. It is the first time that such a simulator is deployed and tested at the scale and complexity needed to prove its usability, accuracy and value.
Trinity will enhance operators' abilities to handle conflicts, manage uncertain demand and generation, maintain system resilience, develop DSO capabilities, and test regulatory policies and innovative solutions. This will improve service and reliability for customers reliant on the electricity networks.
Trinity applies against the Challenge Theme 2: "Strengthening UK's energy system robustness to support efficient roll out of new infrastructure". At the end of Alpha, Trinity will have deployed a working simulator that provides trusted information on the electricity network's response to
changes driven by the energy transition. Accurately predicting this response is critical for de-risking deployment of new solutions such as LCT uptake and flexibility offerings.
The NIA-funded Future Control Room (FCR) (https://ssen-innovation.co.uk/nia-projects/nia-ssen-0053-future-control-room/) project led by SSEN with UKPN and PNDC as partners served as a strong foundation on which to launch Trinity. The simulator applications developed in this project fed into the Trinity use case definition. The assessment of different architectures in Discovery (see appendix) was informed by the desk-based output of FCR, a conceptual simulator design and architecture. The key reasons for selecting one architecture for Alpha phase deployment were around user experience, configuration effort, ease of integration, and model scalability.
End users' direct involvement in Discovery phase helped to shape an Alpha Phase that focuses on demonstrating the real-life value of the simulator by "putting it in front of users". SSEN has been selected as a partner for Alpha Phase, since Discovery Phase engagement with DNOs and a TNO indicated that SSEN can provide a complimentary perspective, both in terms of user requirements and route to market.
The approach of validating the simulator in Alpha Phase has also been informed by the NIC "Constellation" project (https://innovation.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/projects/constellation/), which, amongst others, includes the partners UKPN, PNDC and GE. Learnings from the testing environment developed in Constellation have informed how the validation process will be implemented within the Alpha Phase of Trinity, meaning this activity is both accelerated and de-risked.
Exploring integration options with the wider energy ecosystem form another key part of Trinity and are important stepping-stones in making the simulator a pivotal resource for the GB energy sector. The SIF Round 1 Discovery project "En-TWIN-e" (https://smarter.energynetworks.org/projects/10025651/) informed the scope of the work package which is exploring integration options of the simulator with the wider energy system. Trinity will build on the innovation generated by En-TWIN-e, where a distribution-level network simulator was identified as a pivotal component of a digital twin spanning transmission and distribution. Led by Digital Catapult (also En-TWIN-e partner), this work package and associated engagement with the ESO and DSOs is expected to provide impulses that maximise Trinity's impact beyond the DNO level.
The approach of having limited partners with clear accountability and commitment to the objectives of Trinity will be maintained in Alpha Phase. Given the project's technical nature, an ambitious but focused scale is required to maximise chances of BAU implementation at end of Beta. With costs for Trinity estimated to be £13.6m capex and £680k annual opex, it is unlikely that any single DNO would make the level of investment necessary to address the scale and complexity of the problem alone
Impacts and Benefits
The benefits category for which an initial CBA has been performed, and which will be extended in Alpha Phase is "Financial - future reductions in the cost of operating the network".
The future reductions in this benefits category from Trinity fall into three expenditure categories noted below. The estimated net present value (NPV) of Trinity's impact on these categories is ~£138m for UKPN alone over 2023-2050, with a corresponding annual NPV of ~£4.9m.
The estimated benefits are based on UKPN's average expected expenditure on the three categories based on numbers published in its RIIO-ED2 business plan. These are scaled to 2050 using UKPN's DFES load projections at primary substations as Trinity is expected to deliver annual long-term benefits beyond the project. A higher bound of £13.6m project capex is used to calculate overall NPV, demonstrating Trinity's net positive impact, even when higher implementation costs are factored in.
Forecast over 2023 - 2050 of the benefits by expenditure category:
1. Load-related reinforcement (LRR) - predicted saving £133.24m
The baseline expenditure on LRR is estimated to be £3,651m. To capture the benefits associated with increased use of flexibility and therefore reduced LRR, it is assumed that once Trinity is fully developed the number of substations with active flexibility in each modelled year will increase by 5% compared to the annual number in the absence of Trinity. It is also assumed that the amount of flexibility used per substation increases by 2% in the last year of the project and 10% for each year thereafter (not cumulative). Each £1 of flexibility expenditure is assumed to result in ~£14 of LRR deferral, with a 9-year deferral period. This deferral ratio was calculated based on available RIIO-ED2 data across all DNOs by comparing their planned expenditure on flexibility with the corresponding LRR deferral.
2. Flexibility over-procurement - predicted saving £7.1m
The baseline expenditure on flexibility services is estimated to be £195m. 30% of flexibility procured by DNOs is assumed to be over-procured to account for potential disruptions in the provision of flexibility services. Trinity is forecast to reduce the amount of flexibility that is over-procured by 10%.
3. Control room expenditure - predicted saving £19.4m
The baseline control room expenditure is estimated to be £1,761m. The cost reduction of operating the control room is captured through an avoided cost of increased FTE due to efficiencies driven by Trinity, with FTEs avoided by five in 2025/26 and by six thereafter compared to the number of FTEs required without Trinity.
Benefits categories which will be further explored in Alpha Phase:
· Financial - future reductions in the cost of operating the network: Enable DNOs to run their assets closer to their operating margins, thereby reducing/deferring network capital investment costs.
· Financial - cost savings p.a. for users of network services: Optimised control of DERs resulting in maximised financial benefits for customers owning and operating these assets and released network capacity to enable more customer connections without triggering network reinforcement.
· Environmental - carbon reduction -- indirect CO2 savings p.a.: Accelerate the uptake of LCTs across the distribution system through enabling products and assets to connect with an increasingly dynamic system resulting in indirect carbon reductions.
· New to market: Remove barriers for control room platform integration to increase the uptake and implementation of existing and future innovation solutions/projects; this will result in increased third-party whole system integration (gas, transport, etc.).
· Others (not SIF specific): Enable networks to operate more efficiently through better management of complexity (technical and commercial) and conflicting priorities. This will improve reliability, security of supply, and further reduce CIs/CMLs leading to improved customer satisfaction.
Impacts and benefits
Trinity anticipates delivering a range of key benefits to DNOs. Associated cost saving estimates for these are shown below to reflect benefits realised if implemented at UKPN from 2024–2050:
· Reduction of Load-Related Reinforcement (LRR) – £269m
It is assumed that the number of substations with active flexibility will increase year on year compared to without Trinity, reducing LRR requirements.
· Reduction in over-procurement of network flexibility – £16.42m
30% of flexibility procured by DNOs is assumed to be over-procured to account for potential disruptions in the provision of flexibility services. Trinity will reduce this through improved forecasting.
· Reduction in recruitment of control room resources – £44.2m
It is expected that Trinity will bring efficiency improvements to control rooms such that additional resources will no longer be required once Trinity is adopted.
These benefits have not significantly changed since application, other than including updated assumptions and prices to refine the accuracy of the CBA.
Trinity is also expected to deliver benefits which have not yet been quantified and would need to be explored in further work:
· Network operation cost reductions - Enable DNOs to run assets closer to their operating margins, deferring network capital investment.
· Carbon emission reductions – Accelerate the rate of low carbon technology rollout in the network through simulator testing, and hence accelerate emissions reductions.
· Customer satisfaction improvement – Enable improved network efficiency through better management of its complexity and resolving conflicting priorities. This will improve reliability and reduce incidents, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
The work completed during Alpha confirmed the validity of the simulator use cases, showing that successful implementation would enable the expected improvements to network management and operating efficiency to be achieved. Alpha has therefore increased confidence in the modelled benefits. Further work would be required to integrate the simulator into a formal training package that could be implemented within UKPN and subsequently used to quantify the benefits to Network Control training.
UKPN will explore progressing Trinity as a business funded project due to the significant financial benefits and operational efficiencies which can be realised by the network if successfully implemented. It is therefore considered to represent good value for money for networks and their users due to the wide-range of benefits and the ability to apply the simulator at other DNOs which use the GE ADMS, with much of the upfront work of developing and testing the solution already completed.
