20 June 2025
Our Future Networks team were busy this week presenting innovation pilot projects to conferences in Belfast, Offaly and Geneva.
Managing the challenges presented by net zero requires significant network investment and reinforcement, however, this investment can be minimised or deferred by applying innovative technologies and processes. This week our Future Networks team presented some of the innovation pilots we have completed or underway to share the learning.
Joel McCreery, Future Networks Engineer, highlighted the success of the Flex Pilot at the Smart Grid Ireland Conference in Tullamore, Offaly. Flex involves working with different customers to establish arrangements whereby users are incentivised to adjust or ‘flex’ their demand to different times in order to manage network loadings and avoid constraint limits being reached. By actively managing these constraints, Flex has the potential to defer around £7m worth of investment during the RP7 period.
Naomi Morrow, Future Networks Engineer, then presented initial findings from our Intelligent EV Charging pilot at the All-Ireland Sustainability Summit in Belfast. 349 participants are currently taking part in our trial which involves managing their EV charging via a third party, aiming to spreads the load to times of lower demand, typically in the early hours. By doing so, we can predict and forecast the impacts of these increased loadings on the network and understand what factors can influence charging patterns.
Finally, Peter Glover, Future Networks Manager, highlighted the success of our trial to place monitors on the low voltage network at the CIRED Conference in Geneva. In RP6, 225 monitors were placed throughout Northern Ireland to provide real time visibility for those substations and identify sites which may experience congestion and facilitate timely investment decisions. Other benefits include the potential for early fault detection on the network as well as power quality monitoring. This work is now becoming business as usual with a plan to achieve visibility of 70% of the distribution network through the use of 5000 more monitors in RP7.
Full details on all the pilot projects undertaken in our RP6 Business Plan will be released in our RP6 Innovation report over summer.