Northern Powergrid: Net Zero Hack for Impact

Ahead of our data hackathon on 31 January 2024, we want to spark your interest and ideas by sharing some of the ways Northern Powergrid is considering applying data to advance our role as an enabler of net zero.

Digitalization is driving major transformations across all industries and economies, and data is becoming increasingly crucial. This month's hackathon will bring together people who are passionate about decarbonisation, collaboration and open data to find innovative solutions to some of the challenges we are facing as we work to accelerate net zero and build a more sustainable future.

This event is already making an impact by informing our thinking on the open data sources we make available to our stakeholders. Open data provides them with the information they need to conduct their own upfront analysis and make more informed decisions, in support of their economic development and net zero initiatives. Providing our stakeholders with data that is easy to access and understand allows them to self-serve, increasing the efficiency of their operations and ours, while also inspiring innovative applications that will deliver further benefits. Opening up our data is also increasing quality and improving the transparency of our network operations and development.

We want to highlight the data applications created during our hackathon as inspiring examples of how to re-purpose and reuse data on our Northern Powergrid Open Data Portal. Please let us know how you have utilised our data so we can showcase your work. This will motivate others, help foster collaboration, and drive innovative advancements.

We're committed to driving forward decarbonisation in our region, through partnerships, collaboration and innovation. We're excited to be hosting our inaugural data hackathon because it will serve as a model for how we do things going forward. Sharing information about available data, analysis approaches, useful tools and reporting is a priority at Northern Powergrid and will help stimulate and guide further data analytics.

Energy data challenges

We're passionate about tackling challenges around use of data and delivering the intelligence and insights which will make a real difference to our stakeholders. Improved accessibility and analysis of Northern Powergrid data is key to unlocking benefits for customers, stakeholders, the grid and society at large.

Developing an electricity distribution network that is fit for the future and can accommodate the high volumes of low carbon technologies like Electric Vehicles, heat pumps and solar PV generation, and significant amounts of renewable energy and storage needed to achieve net zero is a challenge. We are innovating for the future, investing more than £234.5 in our data and digitalisation during the current RIIO-ED2 (2025-2028) business plan period; exploring exciting new projects incorporating AI and other emerging technologies and expect to create more than 60 new roles in our Energy Systems directorate.

Data will be fundamental to how we optimise our business models, priorities and processes.

Our electrical distribution network has grown over more than 70 years, dispersing data over numerous different applications and systems. We are investing in projects to consolidate and harmonise data to provide a clean, correct and complete set of master data to provide value internally and to share with external stakeholders. Addressing this challenge is fundamental to how we are optimising our models and business processes.

Some of the data-related questions we are asking relate to power flows on our low voltage (LV) network that delivers power to people's homes and businesses. During RIIO-ED2, Northern Powergrid plans to install around 10,000 substation low voltage monitors to increase visibility and data availability across high risk areas of our network. Analysis of this data will help to inform the necessary interventions in areas of our network facing load growth and deteriorating power quality, due to the high uptake of low carbon technologies.

• Challenge 1 - Validating the connection of low carbon technologies
  To ensure we provide adequate network capacity when and where it's needed, we forecast local load growth from electric vehicles and heat pumps. While customers notify us of new connections, we want to explore using power flow measurements to validate what connections are occurring. Since customers' electricity use is evolving rapidly, we need continuous insight on added loads rather than just examining typical winter peak demands annually. Understanding new electrical demand throughout the year allows us to anticipate future maximum demand accurately and predict network issues requiring action.
• Challenge 2 - Identification of potential theft
  LV monitoring can help identify electricity theft, which increases costs for all our customers and poses significant safety hazards. Customer electricity use generally follows daily, weekly, and in seasonal patterns, though some fluctuation is expected with increased adoption of EVs and heat pumps. Abnormal consumption profiles could reveal illegal electricity abstraction: e.g. cannabis cultivation, which uses more power at night than typical households. Analysing LV monitoring data could help discern consumption patterns linked to electricity theft versus normal usage.
• Challenge 3 - Customer decarbonisation support
  We want to utilise our data and knowledge and integrate other data sources, providing benefits for all customers and stakeholders, including non-experts. We want to further explore approaches to improve information accessibility and the tools our stakeholders require to understand the energy systems role in enabling net zero. For example, an application could display the electricity being consumed and generated in a region, illustrating the related carbon intensity.

Data presents huge opportunities for us, our stakeholders, and customers to work more collaboratively and innovatively to reach net zero. The challenges we have outlined here are just the beginning; we expect you have many more innovative ideas and we're looking forward to hearing them.