The House of Lords Science and Technology select committee heard that the department was setting up an “internal policy team” to look at how new technologies would affect the future resilience of the entire network.
Craig Lucas, director of science and innovation at Decc, said: “Decc, at a top level, recognises that the smart technologies question is something we should have more of a policy view on and were setting up an internal policy team to look at that.”
He added that the department was working with the Energy Systems Catapult, on compiling evidence on how these technologies would affect the electricity system.
This admission came as Decc’s new chief scientific advisor, John Loughhead – representing the Royal Academy of Engineering– told peers it has been “obvious for some years” that an overarching system view of how new and smart technologies will impact the electricity system, and potentially a system architect, was needed.
He added: “What we’ve been doing is exploiting system we’ve got.
“We can see the looming need to start to design it differently but at present it’s not clear who is going to take up that responsibility.”
This echoed Simon Harrison, chair of the Energy Policy Panel at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, who told peers that “resilience could be quite severely compromised if things not engineered properly”.
He said: “If you engineer it well, you will end up with a more resilient system.
“If you just hang it on what we have at the moment, you will end up with a much less resilient system that could fall apart.”