Project Summary

Key Activities

As society reduces carbon usage and becomes greener, some people will easily participate in this energy transition, others, either by choice or factors outside their control, will not. To ensure an equitable transition, energy networks need to cater for all consumers. To deliver economic growth, and net zero, electricity networks are adapting and expanding. Doing this in a customer centric manner is a challenge SSEN are tackling with Project VERIFY.

For the first time, VERIFY will combine data on networks, properties, consumer demographics and smart meters to ensure electricity networks can better tailor network investments to match the needs of local consumers.

Collaborating with local authorities, charities, gas networks, and powerful computing technologies, VERIFY will evaluate the most cost efficient and beneficial solutions for energy networks and consumers alike.

VERIFY builds on two previous successful projects:

Vulnerability Identification via Informative Data (VIVID) pioneered the identification of potentially vulnerable households by combining multiple data sets and demonstrating that insightful data can be shared securely and compliantly.

Vulnerability Future Energy Scenarios (VFES) identified areas of high consumer vulnerability and lower levels of community resilience. VFES successfully supported investment decisions at SSEN based on consumer requirements. However, the techniques used for VFES need to be refined, made more granular and applied at scale. VERFIY will do this and take customer centric investment planning to the next level.

Expected Benefits

VERIFY will use the best available data, combine and refine it into a usable and scalable format to support networks, consumers, and wider stakeholders by:

Improving decision making on network investments by understanding the needs of consumers connected, to targeted interventions and support, e.g. providing additional assistance to increase participation in flexibility schemes and reduce inequalities
Supporting consumers to adopt Low Carbon Technologies (LCTs)
Proactively identifying customers in vulnerable situations to provide additional support and include them on the Priority Services Register (PSR)
Better targeting of support from energy suppliers, Gas Distribution Networks (GDNs), fuel poverty partners, councils, and others
Improved digital inclusion and awareness of smart energy benefits
Cumulatively, the data shared in VERIFY will help drive a just energy transition, incorporating consumer data with Distribution Network Operators (DSOs) strategic investment process to a greater extent than ever before.

VERIFY will also build upon AI techniques used in VFES to drive better understanding of the consumers connected networks and provide a more resilient service year on year.

Bridging the gap between data-driven insights and real-world consumer needs.
Identifying vulnerable consumers through targeted, AI-enhanced decision-making.
Increasing participation in flexibility markets, greater resilience for low-income consumers, and more equitable access to the benefits from flexibility.

Delivering a GB-wide scalable/replicable service for each DSO to create low voltage investment plans while ensuring a just transition and addressing energy inequality.

The potential users of VERIFY across GB are:

Network licensees
Energy Suppliers
Local Authorities
Third Sector
Emergency services

VERIFY is a three-year project and involves some of the best minds from energy systems and supply, academia, health, data science, consumer engagement, and the third sector.
Following the project, we envisage VERIFY being deployed across all Great Britain’s electricity and gas network companies. Once implemented the economic benefits should exceed over £400m.

Innovation Justification

VERIFY will address Round 3, Challenge 2, Scope 4.

Working with a range of stakeholders we will bring together network, customer, and property data at scale from multiple sources in an innovative and GDPR compliant manner to better understand consumer requirements at a granular level.

This will help networks better forecast local demand growth at low voltage (LV) and identify the right interventions at the right time, more efficiently. Where demand is forecast to increase sharply, the network can be reinforced; where flexibility is the correct intervention, schemes can be targeted to the consumer demographic, helping more people to participate in flex; where consumers are less resilient, the network can be prioritised for security of supply. It will also identify opportunities to promote the uptake of LCTs and the PSR to households who could benefit from them.

VERIFY builds on:

VIVID SIF Alpha - demonstrated the ability to amalgamate sensitive data from multiple organisations and sectors, assessing and grading the needs of consumers.
VFES NIA -- created a framework for including consumer vulnerability within our future energy scenario modelling (DFES), ensuring its consideration in DNO investment planning.
Both projects demonstrated that sharing granular data with cross sector partners produces valuable insights that can be incorporated into operational processes.

VERIFY is also informed by other NIA projects which developed innovative approaches to sharing data including, Local Energy Net Zero Accelerator (LENZA) and Near Real-time Data Access (NeRDA); and projects considering a just transition, particularly Socially Green, Smart & Fair and HOMEflex.

VERIFY will go beyond these projects, by adding new use cases and additional data sets to show how better consumer information can inform network investment improving efficiency in both planning and delivery. It will also develop techniques for engaging consumers to participate in flexibility, and improving identification of consumers in vulnerable situations, and new options for providing support i.e. addressing digital exclusion to encourage access to flexibility markets.

No project has yet considered using social and demographic factors at scale as a driver for network investment planning. This project will use granular data from local level to understand likely changes in demand which will allow DNOs to optimise investment planning ahead of need, whilst driving efficient delivery by aligning our investment plans to match the social and demographic characteristics of the community. In doing so, VERIFY will surface the consumer archetypes who would benefit from LCT adoption and find ways to facilitate it, it will also highlight areas where flexibility can be procured from consumers who would ordinarily miss out. In addition, the insights developed can also highlight where consumers are potentially vulnerable, for example by highlighting those missing from PSR. Delivering a project of this scale and complexity requires the funding and framework of SIF to allow it to develop fully.

The project will initially run a trial in Aberdeen to prove that the platform meets its aims. This will be expanded to cover both SSEN distribution areas and the engagement of different partner agencies. This scale is required to produce a well-rounded platform and methodology for adoption and would not be achieved without SIF funding. At the end of Beta VERIFY will be TRL8, IRL6 and CRL7 (large-scale demonstration, ready for BaU transition) allowing it to improve outcomes for networks and consumers.

Current network planning systems do not have sufficient visibility of the "people" connected to network to fully consider them in the planning and delivery of network investments. By working with partners and sharing data we can gain quality insights to drive efficiency, avoid potentially stranded assets, and support consumers, ensuring a fair and just transition.

Impacts and Benefits

Financial - Future reductions in the cost of operating the network

Baseline: Investments on electricity networks are based on future capacity forecasts and the age, condition and criticality of the circuits. Baseline costs will be based on the BAU approach to investment planning incorporating DFES scenarios and using current flexibility tender methodologies. The baseline uses data from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Low Voltage Network Capacity Study.

Solutions: VERIFY will reduce future network operating costs by identifying the most cost-efficient way to manage network development, optimising expenditure by making data driven decisions based on an understanding of the local consumer demographics. The savings will be reflected in the cost of delivering future load related LV reinforcement program.

Metrics: Network savings to 2035 £45.62m; Network savings to 2050 £285.13m (undiscounted)

Financial - Cost savings per annum on energy bills for consumers

Baseline: Baseline will be the average cost of energy per year for GB energy consumers

Solutions: Cost savings will be made available to energy customers through improved access to heatpumps and energy efficiency measures which will provide reductions to bills through more efficient production of heat and greater thermal efficiency of houses. Savings will be measured as the reduction in average consumer bills that are able to participate in VERIFY related heatpump or energy efficiency rollouts.

Metrics: Number of households supported with energy and/or cost savings up to 5,070 with a net benefit to consumers of up to £154.89m (undiscounted) to 2050.

Revenues - improved access to revenues for users of network services

Baseline: Energy networks already focus on keeping costs low. However, in the drive to net zero new methods are required to benefit the whole energy system and energy system users.

Solutions: VERIFY will help to drive better rollout of domestic PV installations and better access to flexibility markets for consumers. These will allow consumers to gain an income by providing services to the network.

Metrics: Potential income for network users in up to 10,790 households totalling up to £301.15m (undiscounted) to 2050.

Environmental - Carbon reduction, indirect CO2 savings per annum

Baseline: The baseline will be the carbon intensity either of electricity (decreasing over time) or natural gas used for heating.

Solutions Better provision of domestic PV will export more renewable power onto the grid displacing electricity with standard carbon intensity thereby reducing emissions. Energy efficiency will improve the thermal efficiency of buildings, reducing heating bills and meaning that less gas is used. Heatpump deployment will mean that electricity is used to heat properties instead of gas with resultant carbon savings.

Metrics: Carbon emissions reduction estimation of 336,307 tCO2e to 2050.

Non SIF specific benefits

VERIFY will positively impact customers who are currently disadvantaged and getting left behind in the energy transition. Finding household who are currently in vulnerable situations and providing help to them via the PSR, Local Authority, or the third sector and helping people out of fuel poverty is a key aim for VERIFY, being on the PSR register is an essential first step in this process

The number of consumers supported directly because of identification in VERIFY will be the measure of success for this metric. We have used a Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology to estimate these benefits building on the learning from the VIVID project.

Metrics: Number of additional households supported up to 3,642 with a net benefit (SROI) of up to £20.41m (undiscounted) to 2050.