SSEN granted £9.5m for low carbon network resilience

The Resilience as a Service (RaaS) project seeks to avoid carbon intensive standby generation while supporting network reliability and resilience

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has been granted more than £9.5 million to deliver a project aimed at supporting low carbon solutions for a resilient power network.

The Resilience as a Service (RaaS) project seeks to avoid carbon intensive standby generation while supporting network reliability and resilience, particularly for remote and isolated networks.

When a fault occurs, stand-by generators, usually diesel generators, are often utilised to maintain a customer’s electricity supply which increases the carbon intensity of a household’s electricity.

RaaS aims to develop a market-based solution to provide customers with a low carbon, cost effective and secure electricity supply, even during faults.

The four-year project, supported by Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competition (NIC), brings together procurement experts Costain and Big Six supplier E.ON.

The project will apply key learning from E.ON’s  previous demonstrator ‘Simris’ in Sweden, which seamlessly disconnected a section of its network from the grid and maintained supply using a combination of renewables, energy storage and smart energy management techniques.

Stewart Reid, Head of Future Networks for SSEN said: “Maintaining a resilient network is central to our role as network operator. Maintaining this resilience as we meet ‘net zero’ is only going to become harder unless we apply new methods. These methods need to take advantage of new partnerships, local renewable energy and the advances in the digital world. The awarding of this project is a significant step towards meeting this challenge and we look forward to working with out partners, communities and other stakeholders in its detailed design and delivery.

“The RaaS project will allow us to accelerate and de-risk the use of services for providing resilience, including enabling infrastructure, data exchanges and commercial arrangements, thereby reducing uncertainty for customers and industry.”

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