Project Summary
Planning Regional Infrastructure in a Digital Environment (PRIDE) Alpha phase, aims to develop both technical and organisational solutions to integrated planning and connection of decarbonised heat and transport demand, that reduces overall cost and timescales. The project focusses on using data and digital demand planning, across multiple levels of the energy system, to facilitate, manage and integrate multiple demands across heat, transport and energy demand reduction. PRIDE will produce a whole systems digital planning tool and regional governance structure to support local authorities to produce more Local Area Energy Plans at lower cost, and that serve energy network planning needs.
Innovation Justification
ALIGNMENT WITH CHALLENGE THEME
The project develops both technical and organisational solutions to integrated planning and connection of decarbonised heat and transport demand that reduces overall cost and timescales. The project focusses on using data and digital demand planning across multiple levels of the energy system to facilitate, manage and integrate multiple demands across heat, transport and energy demand reduction.
INNOVATION & TRLS
The project develops a digital tool from TRL5 to TRL6 to include new datasets and analytical models to support a wider set of use cases that will be selected to support the decarbonisation of major energy loads. These additional functions will also provide valuable tools to enable emerging organisational structures to implement regionally driven whole systems decision making.
Alpha phase will trial a tool to simplify complex decision-making for energy network and local government users. Desktop-based single-user workflows are now becoming obsolete as organisations move their software systems entirely to cloud-based platforms for which advanced scenario modelling is available to anyone with a web-browser. The use of common design tools for building portfolio owners, housing developers and transport planners will enable collaboration and transparent data driven decision-making. The solution will develop CIBSE and BSI compliant retrofit modes that leverage enhanced national-scale datasets such as HMRC VOA, HMLR, EPC/DEC using common PAS2035/SAP standards to ensure open and interoperable outputs in line with Principle 8 of the Net Zero Living Data Guidance.
IMPROVING ON THE STATE-OF-THE-ART
Previous modelling was limited by GDPR and organisational barriers preventing stakeholders sharing data. Scenario modelling represented a substantial capacity and capability barrier, as well as a huge cost. This innovation improves on the state-of-the-art by replacing spatially aggregated data and PDF reports with always-up-to-date data assets. The building-level data sets, modelling tools and digital interfaces will enable data-driven investment decisions. This reduces the time and skills required to deliver net zero projects and allows for use-case centred data asset creation.
WORK DONE TO DATE
The tool targets emission reduction in domestic building stock by accelerating the rollout of retrofits. This project will extend the scope of the tool to include more accurate data and modelling tools for domestic low carbon technologies. The project will integrate learning from NIA projects Equinox, Defender, Venice and EPIC. These provide relevant information on flexibility, energy efficiency impacts, vulnerable customers and future load profiles. Governance structures developed by WMCA as part of their Deeper Devolution Deal from central Government and under PfER RESO will be applied and tested. Gaps in capability will be mapped and organisational and technical methods will be used to close them.
SUITABILITY FOR SIF FUNDING
The SIF mechanism allows for longer-term and strategic engagement of local government and commercial partners by network operators. This partnership allows the co-creation of technical and organisational solutions to the complex challenge of multifactor decision analysis across diverse organisational boundaries. The large-scale trial of a beta phase enables the testing of these solutions at meaningful scales before their adoption by other network operators.The sponsorship and reporting to OFGEM is highly relevant to their ongoing consultation on the Future of Local Energy Institutions and Governance and as anarchitect of the Regional System Planner and Future System Operator functions.The organisational challenges and complex data and digital solutions are not suitable for exploration under business-as-usual. The consortium meets the partner requirements by inclusion of public sector bodies (the WMCA has astatutory function in transport planning and housing development and also leads consortia on retrofit with partner social housing providers), and Transmission and Distribution Network Operators, enabling the examination of the Regional System Planner function from multiple perspectives.
Impacts and Benefits
CURRENT POSITION AND INNOVATION METRICS
A limited number of digital tools exist that allow collaborative working between network operators and local authorities. Open data portals and self-service platforms in development do not sufficiently serve the requirements of the Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) use case explored in this project. Open data portals have limited impact because the LV data required to deliver the LAEP use case is not available. Self-service platforms don't provide a collaborative workspace, don't support portfolios of projects and don't integrate with scenarios and pathways.The innovation metric used to measure success will be the rate of deployment of the low carbon technologies most technically mature to be deployed at scale (photovoltaic, energy efficiency, electric vehicle infrastructure, energy storage, heat pumps and heat networks). The benefits calculations assume between 2%-15% increase in the deployment rate of these technologies.
Currently DNOs engage with local authorities and developers on an individual basis. LAEPs are rarely established and haven't been aggregated to support network planning. Local authorities aren't required or funded to produce LAEPs and so planning approaches are inconsistent. The WMCA is co-ordinating engagement across the West Midlands through the Energy Capital Partnership and building on learning from the PfER RESO project to advise OfgGEM through their consultation processes on how a Regional System Planner (RSP) may be established.
BENEFITS FORECAST
A national deployment of the technical solution has a NPV of £61 million and a Benefits to Cost Ratio of 4.7 over 10 years. These benefits sit within the £51billion of additional benefits of a placed-based energy transition identified in the Accelerating Net Zero Delivery Report (Innovate UK & PWC 2022) that compared the costs and benefits of the energy transition under the two scenarios of a place-agnostic and place-specific deployment model between 2022-2050.
Network operator benefits:
Lower demand on connection services: By providing data to tools used for self-service assessments, the number of connection requests made to network operators will reduce; when self-service assessments show that projects are non-viable, connections applications will not be made. We have identified a total saving of up to £2.9million per year should the solution be deployed across all six DNOs. This cost saving assumes the workforce of 180 connection engineers employed nationwide could be reduced proportionate to a 20% reduction in non-viable connection requests.
LAEP Support: RIIO-ED2 obligations require that DNOs support local authorities to develop LAEPs. Reducing the number of agents required to support customers with digital tools and workflows will deliver this more cost-effectively. We have identified a total saving of up to £3.2million per year should the solution be deployed nationwide. This cost saving assumes the workforce of 120 agents employed nationwide could be reduced proportionate to a 33% reduction improvement in efficiency with a digitalised LAEP tool.
More effective strategic investment: Aligning strategic investment with future demand allows for timely reinforcement of energy networks and efficient deployment of capital. Network operators have identified 2.5% of capital savings across the network operators and customers through better coordination of project and infrastructure deployments. We have identified a total saving of up to £10million per year should the solution be deployed nationwide. This cost saving assumes a 0.125% contribution to the improvement in capital allocation due to project coordination through a digital tool.
BENEFITS REALISED TO DATE
WMCA has WMCA has accelerated the delivery of its LAEP through this project. It has evidenced the compatibility of its governance model with the RSP, engaged both NGED and ESO within working groups and held a series of stakeholder workshops to obtain senior political support for the Alpha phase.
