Ofgem has awarded £95.3 million to 10 projects for the final phase of the inaugural round of its Strategic Innovation Fund.
More than a third of the money – £33.3 million – will go towards a project led by National Gas Transmission to establish whether existing gas compression units on the transmission network can be adapted to work with 100% hydrogen.
The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) was introduced as part of the RIIO2 price controls to replace the Network Innovation Competition and focus innovation funding on solving strategic challenges faced by all networks in a sector.
The latest grants awarded are for the third and final ‘beta’ stage of the first round of funding which began in 2022. The successful projects initially received funding for feasibility studies in the ‘discovery’ stage and then for proof-of-concept work in the ‘alpha’ stage.
The projects cover four strategic challenges: whole system integration; data and digitalisation; heat; and zero emission transport. They include schemes to use data analytics to prevent faults, leakages and safety incidents, a project to enable wind farms to provide stability services to the power grid and a project to investigate the deblending of hydrogen from gas networks for use by heavy transport.
They also include the CrowdFlex project led by the Electricity System Operator (ESO) at National Grid, which is aiming to build a forecasting model for domestic demand and flexibility, based on large-scale consumer trials, to inform a new product design.
Carolina Tortora, head of digital transformation and innovation strategy at National Grid ESO, said: “We believe there is a huge opportunity during this transition to build a smart flexible energy system by enabling consumers to act as a new source of flexibility, supporting more low-carbon technologies and reducing consumer costs. The CrowdFlex demonstrator is a major step towards a national domestic flexibility programme.”
The five-year SIF programme will make up to £450 million available for network innovation projects by 2026. In April, Ofgem announced 53 projects had been awarded more than £6 million to conduct feasibility studies as part of the discovery phase of the second funding round.
A third round is due to open for feasibility study proposals in autumn 2023. It will be the first round that is accessible to electricity distribution networks, which began their RIIO2 price controls two years later than transmission and gas distribution networks in April of this year.
The SIF is supported by Innovate UK whose deputy director for the programme Matt Hastings said: “It is exciting to see these beta projects, after showing their potential, moving on to demonstrate their energy innovations in the real world. Net zero is the most urgent issue of our lifetime, and the SIF and the energy networks have moved fast to develop these ideas into large-scale demonstrators in less than 18 months from initial proposals. They have the potential to deliver big savings in costs and carbon emissions in the coming years.
“The SIF has already funded more than 100 innovative projects since 2022, and we encourage more innovators to come forward with great ideas that could become the transformative technologies of tomorrow.”
Marzia Zafar, deputy director of digitalisation and innovation at Ofgem, said: “To achieve our target of clean power by 2035 we need to look across the board for innovative solutions that will deliver resiliency, reliability and affordability at pace.
“Our work with Innovate UK empowers innovators through SIF funding and creates a launch pad for development of the transformative technologies which will help drive forward the energy transition at least cost to consumers.”
The full list of the latest grants:
Whole system integration
| Project | Partners | Funding |
| Incentive – Investigating whether offshore wind farms, coupled with energy storage, can provide stability services such as inertia to the power grid | Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN)
University of Strathclyde National Grid ESO Carbon Trust |
£922,333 |
| Network-DC – Investigating whether the use of direct current (DC) breakers can allow many wind farms to connect a DC network, thereby reducing the number of coastal converter stations | SSEN
University of Edinburgh Carbon Trust National Grid ESO SuperGrid Institute |
£5,486,794 |
| CrowdFlex – Exploring large-scale consumer participation in energy network flexibility services | National Grid ESO
Element Energy National Grid Electricity Distribution Octopus Energy Ovo Energy SSEN Centre for Net Zero Ohme Amazon Web Services |
£18,610,355 |
| HyNTS Compression – Testing whether existing compression equipment can be used in 100% hydrogen networks | National Gas Transmission
Cardiff University Siemens Northern Gas Networks SGN DNV Premtech Cullum Detuners |
£33,303,556 |
Data and digitalisation
| Project | Partners | Funding |
| Predict4Resilience – Using data on historical faults, land cover, weather and surveys to improve the forecasting of network faults and risks | SP Energy Networks
University of Glasgow SIA Partners SSEN |
£4,518,605 |
| Predictive Safety Interventions – Using data and artificial intelligence to prevent safety incidents | SGN
Cadent Northern Gas Networks National Grid FYLD |
£1,078,258 |
| Intelligent Gas Grid – Using weather data and artificial intelligence to monitor and control gas networks, including optimising pressure management, detecting faults and assisting the injection of green gas | SGN
Cadent Northern Gas Networks Wales and West Utilities National Grid Utonomy DNV |
£6,072,524 |
| Digital Platform for Leakage Analytics – Reducing gas network leaks through the development and use of a digital platform | Cadent
Northern Gas Networks Wales and West Utilities National Gas Transmission SGN Guidehouse Europe |
£9,496,476 |
Heat
| Project | Partners | Funding |
| Velocity Design with Hydrogen – Investigating the use of hydrogen in gas distribution networks | SGN
Cadent Northern Gas Networks Wales and West Utilities National Grid Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers DNV |
£5,912,144 |
Zero emission transport
| Project | Partners | Funding |
| HyNTS Deblending for Transport Applications – Investigating the deblending of hydrogen from gas networks for use by heavy transport refuelling stations | National Grid
Element Energy Cadent Northern Gas Networks Wales and West Utilities SGN DNV Element 2 HyET Hydrogen |
£9,921,257 |