Speaking in a panel discussion at Utility Week Congress in Birmingham yesterday, ENW network strategy and technical services director Paul Bircham said one of the key barriers to rolling out innovation projects is whether the regulator is “prepared to stand behind the challenge it put out to the industry”.
“If we take the Class project… Part of the challenge of RIIO was to say: ‘one of the ‘I’s in RIIO is about innovation, we want you to think outside the box, we want you to try different things’,” he said.
“Well we’ve done that, we’ve come back from this thinking outside the box and we’ve said we could roll this out commercially,” he said.
Class is a Low Carbon Networks funded project which aims to increase the capacity of the electricity network using voltage control to manage consumption at peak times, without having an adverse effect on customers.
The project came to an end at the end of last month and ENW said it successfully demonstrated that capacity can be increased by controlling voltage on the electricity network – a solution that could be rolled out nationwide.
However, Bircham said that distribution network operators (DNOs) need “assurance from the regulator” that they’ll be allowed to keep the money they make.
“It’s a really interesting test of a regulator seeing whether it genuinely wants to reap what it sows,” said Bircham. “If it challenges the industry and does respond, is it prepared to let us move forward with that?”
Earlier this week, power services company S&C Electric warned that the DNOs must “quickly” roll out proven technologies and convert successful demonstration projects into business-as-usual, so they don’t just keep doing demonstration projects.