The process for new connections is overly reliant on manual interventions for engagement, leading to prolonged delays and inefficiencies. Customers face wait times for preliminary phases, connection details, and programmes due to the lack of a system for indicative views of the network they are looking to connect to.

IConn will integrate accurate estimation of substation capacity, new connections costs and timelines, and a route planner that identifies optimal solutions. Creating the ability for SPT to have clearly identifiable guidance on the best solution at the earliest stage in the connections process. This enables a holistic view of SPT’s network area and assists transmission operators and developers to have a greater understanding of where would be most beneficial for all parties for a new connection.

Objectives

The Intelligent Connection Explorer integrates accurate estimation of substation capacity, accurate estimation of new connections costs and timelines, and a route planner that identifies optimal paths of Overhead Lines (OHL) for these connections. Creating the ability for SPT to have clearly identifiable guidance on available capacity, routing, costs, and programme timelines at the earliest stage in the connections process. This enables a holistic view of SPT’s network area and assists transmission operators and project developers to have a greater understanding of where would be most beneficial for all parties for a new connection.

The project will be a continuation of the previous phase of the Intelligent Connections tool, looking at improving the customer facing elements of the tool, integrating the tool further into SPEN’s systems, and further developing the network design elements, looking at load flows of assets impacted by potential new connections. It will also be bringing in the complexity surrounding Connections Reform and technology limits through the Clean Power 2030 Plan (CP30). The integration of the tool to self-serve on our website is a key focus of the scope of this phase of the project, looking at integration to not only our website, but our connections portal.

Key deliverables and works required:

Power Flow Analysis:

Power flow analysis is a way we measure the impact connections have on our network to ensure we prepare for future expansions and optimise the existing network. We aim to show these values both before and after adding a new connection, allowing SPT to assess and present its impact on the system. Each time the user adjusts the new connection inputs, a power flow analysis runs in the background to update the network impact in real time. Some of the benefits include:

• Rapid Impact Assessment – To rapidly evaluate how new connections affect the grid.
• Better Decision-Making – To identify potential overloads and help network planning by identifying need for reinforcements.
• Enhanced Visibility – Makes power system analysis accessible to non-specialists.
• Efficiency - increased efficiency of scarce and valuable Design and Planning resources.

A process to automatically flag the needed reinforcements could be implemented. Where loading is noted to be high for certain assets, i.e. Lines, Transformers etc, these could be indicators of required reinforcement, thus taking the onus off the relevant teams to do these investigations and creating a starting point for further design considerations. This will overall improve the experience for our customers ensuring at the pre-application stage they do not receive an indicative view of our network that could not be met.

Alignment with CP30:

The purpose of this addition to IConn is to facilitate a rapid assessment of a new connection request's viability, considering the connection's technology and the existing installed and contracted capacity for that technology within the zone of intended connection as defined by CP30.

To further align with CP30, and the ongoing Connections Reform, additional assessment criteria and constraints can be incorporated into the tool. These may include prioritisation rules, queue management logic, or locational signals based on network availability. By integrating such elements, IConn would not only support more efficient initial assessments but also help ensure that connection offers are made in a way that reflects the evolving principles and governance of the NESO connections process.

Self-serve tool:

The development of a self-serve tool, accessible through our website and integrated with our connections portal, is seen as the next logical step for the IConn tool and would be developed in two parts:

The first would include developing the specific external view suitable to customers. This would involve further modelling of the tool and the outputs it provides, design and development of the of the customer facing view with validation and verification sessions with various internal stakeholders to ensure the customer is provided only what is deemed as necessary information. The definition of ‘necessary information’ within this context would need to be determined first and foremost by the internal stakeholders providing data and insight for the development of the tool.

The second part of the external view development would then involve integration of the application into SPEN internal architecture and onto our website. We would need collaboration with SPEN CoE teams for smooth integration to the website as well as further support from the Architecture Strategy teams for integration into Iberdrola’s systems. Some parties of those relevant teams have been involved in the first NIA phase (Phase 2), so this should allow for a smoother transition.

Portal integration:

Customers can save a ‘snapshot in time’ of the solution for each project that can then be referred back to months later if the customer returns for another pre-app or an offer, to compare differences in network. These ‘snapshots’ will only be accessible through the portal, and the already existing portal functions, such as specific log-ins for each customers, and ability to projects through their process, will aid in this development. At this phase, the portal integration will be a Proof-of-Concept which we intend to iterate on in later stages.

AI Assisted Model and Data Maintenance:

To keep the SPT transmission network model used by IConn for power flow studies up to date following the approval of new reinforcements and connection agreements, SPT currently needs to manually triangulate and combine data from multiple disparate sources, such as PDFs, salesforce extracts, structured tables, and other unstructured documents. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity to streamline and significantly reduce the manual effort required for this process. The envisioned workflow would transform fragmented structured and unstructured inputs into a coherent and reliable dataset that can be used to keep the contracted network model up to date.

As part of the innovation project DScience Ltd will take a sample of future network data and develop a series of fine-tuned locally hosted models that are able to take the raw unstructured data and convert them into a format which can be used in IConn’s power system model. The process will include human QA to ensure outputs are reliable. Models will not interact with external systems. Should the innovation be successful the project team will work with SPT IS and explore options for incorporating the agentic workflow on SPT’s internal cloud.