To build new research capability in order to address nationally strategic objectives for the support of health of discipline in priority areass such as electrical power engineering and energy. Such new capacity would be intended to undertake research and support the growth of UK industry innovation. This is a project that requires major investments to provide adequate breadth and depth in order to increase prospective research impacts, therefore consortium partners (apart from EPSRC) include Rolls-Royce, ScottishPower, National Grid and Strathclyde University. The proposed investment acknowledges that there has been a serious reduction of academic staff specialising in electrical power engineering in UK-HEIs. It is also recognised that, in order to retain and develop electrical power research capability, there is a need to take a joint HEI, industry & government approach to investment and commitment in this area. The support of research centres with the necessary critical mass to undertake basic, strategic and applied research is seen as a strategic imperative. UK industry and society will benefit greatly from a sustainable, active, internationally leading research base in electrical power engineering and energy systems. In addition to the erosion of the electrical power research base, there is a serious reduction in the undergraduate and postgraduate populations that new, active academic staff could help to address (c.f. recent IEE review and subsequent establishment of the Power Academy). It is important to note that these principles are also entirely consistent with subsequent objectives that have emerged in the EPSRC Science and Innovation Awards scheme. As such, the proposed programme, incorporating major industrial funding, provides additional value and scope to complement the first round EPSRC Science and Innovation Awards. The funding commitment from each of the industrial partners along with direct Strathclyde commitments will provide significant added value to the proposed EPSRC Star investments in terms of research scope, scale and critical mass.

FlexNet has been set the goal of researching the future form of the electricity network. This is a great challenge because electricity networks are formed from long lifetime equipment that will often be in place for more than 50 years and which costs a great deal to replace. Much of the UK network was constructed in the 1960s and 1970s and falls due for replacement soon. This is both an opportunity and a threat. The plans for replacement must stand the test of time or future generations will face a large bill for making changes. We are at a point where the future of electricity generation is uncertain. We know that low-carbon energy is the objective but the network required to support offshore wind is very different from the network to support domestic-scale fuel cells. The key will be to plan, design and build networks that are sufficiently flexible to meet several quite different scenarios. There are limits to the flexibility though. First, flexibility generally requires more investment for which electricity consumers ultimately pay. Second, electrical networks are major projects that impact local communities and those communities' have important views on what technology is acceptable. Third, flexibility calls for a far greater level of real-time control of the network which poses challenges in analysis and implementation. FlexNet will research the technologies to provide flexibility, the market mechanisms through which investment is encouraged efficiently and the way in which public attitudes might shape what can be done. FlexNet is a consortium of universities, electrical network operators, equipment manufacturers and NGOs. The seven universities combine expertise in electrical engineering, economics and social science. The consortium builds on the work of its predecessor, FutureNet.

Since the early 1990s, there has been a steady reduction in the number of engineers working in this power sector, due to privatisation, restructuring and increased opportunities in other sectors. This has resulted in an unfavourable age profile in the industry and an anticipated future deficit. This situation was recognised and resulted in the creation of the IET Power Academy (PA) in 2004 to attract able and motivated students into power engineering courses at selected universities, using generous scholarships from the 16 partner power companies. Parallel to the engineering workforce decline in the electrical power industry, university-based research has also shrunk to a minimum in this area, with fewer academic staff available to teach undergraduates and perform research. This reduction in the pool of power engineers has inevitably had an impact on the availability of academic and research staff to:* teach electrical power engineering courses at undergraduate and taught post-graduate level. Of particular relevance here will be Power Academy and other home students as well as the overseas market in which the UK has been traditionally strong.* provide power networks engineering research solutions in the UK to respond to the challenges arising from power grid renewal, the impact of government low carbon policies, and to ensure future network resilience.This application for the creation of the Power Networks Research Academy (PNRA) will provide a future supply of academic/research staff for the UK university sector. The PNRA, by awarding PhD scholarships, will establish effective mechanisms to enable power network companies and related manufacturers and suppliers to work effectively with universities in helping to fund and support needed areas of research. The PNRA and the PA, thus, have a common aim, but with different destinations, of providing future electrical power engineers. It is anticipated that the PA offers a useful template for the establishment of the PNRA and, in this first application for funding, the universities involved in the PA will, similarly, be part of the PNRA consortium. From the industrial side, UK transmission and distribution network operators as well as manufacturers are supporting this proposal.

There has been a huge investment in micro generation from both customers and small scale providers, particularly in residential PV. Individual participation of these assets (offers to buy/sell/store energy) by micro/domestic scale agents in local, distributed electricity markets is currently a significant business and technological challenge in the UK's large-scale energy systems. A solution to enable energy trading between small scale generators and consumers that provides a compelling business case for storage and further penetration of embedded renewables is essential. New aggregators, that is, new market players who are highly adaptable in terms of dynamically organising Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), are emerging to provide a retail service to distributed groups of customers who could not manage to act in the energy market on their own. These aggregators would deal with requirements of the wider energy system by utilising diverse and multiple low carbon and renewable technologies for generation and storage to provide local/micro-grid solutions. However, there are significant barriers to the emergence of such entities which can be overcome by adoption of contemporary digital technologies. Our AGILE proposal sets out an integrated digital solution which can deliver suitable mechanisms to allow aggregators to offer the wider energy market bundled DER services of particular duration and value. To allow this, the preferences and descriptions of DERs, which form smart, micro contracts, will be articulated using an agent based model. Bids and offers will be enabled through integration with Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) which will provide a trustworthy implementation of the scheme through a distributed database trusted by all agents. AGILE will examine the synergies between several permissioned, public, and hybrid DLTs as there are key questions about which type of ledger and related services is best for this elastic aggregator approach. An optimisation model will recommend particular configurations of DERs satisfying several portfolio optimisation strategies (financial, environmental and social welfare). The validation of preferred configurations of DERs is an essential step to ensure the feasibility of DER incorporation and a digitised, stylised IEEE network will be integrated into the digital solution to achieve this. Validation using a range of realistic network topologies will be performed to evaluate the effect on aggregator business models.

Heating indoor spaces by burning natural gas accounts for ~30% of the UK's total CO2 emissions. Around 23 million properties are connected to the gas network. Each 1kg of gas burned delivers ~12kWh of heat and releases ~4kg of CO2. That cannot continue in a future net-zero UK and capturing CO2 at individual buildings is completely implausible using any known technology. Many consider that hydrogen should replace natural gas in the gas network. Technically, this is feasible. Hydrogen can be produced from electrolysis or from natural gas. In case of the latter, 'carbon-capture' methods can collect most of the resulting CO2 and pump that underground. However, distributing hydrogen through the gas network might not necessarily be the most sensible course of action in all cases. This project will answer the question about how best to use different parts of existing gas network in a future net-zero UK. Even with carbon-capture, producing hydrogen from natural gas does cause some CO2 emissions. Typically >5% escapes. Using renewable electricity to make 'green' hydrogen via electrolysis and then burning that in boilers delivers less than 7kWh of heat into homes for every 10kWh of electricity used. By contrast, using electrically driven heat pumps can deliver 40kWh of heat for every 10kWh of electricity consumed. Although there are other advantages to producing hydrogen for heating, it remains questionable whether this is optimal in many parts of the UK. It is very likely that a large fraction of the existing infrastructure will be used for distributing hydrogen across the country. However, some specific parts of the network could be better exploited in a different way. This project will explore the different possible uses for those parts of the gas network. All of these potential uses are motivated mainly by solving problems that would arise if heat pumping were deployed very extensively in the UK as the primary heating mechanism. One possible future use for parts of the gas network is to feed non-potable water into properties. This water could serve as the source of low-temperature heat to support heat pumps. A new variety of heat pump turns incoming water into an ice slurry and discards the slurry to melt again later. This 'Latent Heat Pump' (LHP) can extract a lot of heat out of cold water (12L of water provides ~1kWh of heat). That heat emerges from the water at about 0C and as a consequence, the LHP can have a coefficient-of-performance (COP) >4 even when the outside air is very cold. For most air-source heat pumps, the COP falls sharply in very cold weather and, for obvious reasons, the COP matters most in very cold weather. A second possible future use for the gas network is to serve as a return (collection) network rather than as a delivery (distribution) network. Here, the fluid returning through the gas network would be an aqueous solution of a chemical that was hydrated (mixed with water) at the property to release heat. This measure would be taken only in very cold weather. Calcium Chloride and Magnesium Sulphate are two very cheap salts that release heat when dissolved in water. There are other inexpensive substances that release large quantities of heat upon reacting with water. Finally, if water was being conveyed in the low-pressure tiers of the gas network, the high-pressure tiers of the gas network would be free for another use. A very attractive possibility here would be to use those parts as the pressure vessel for a compressed air energy storage system. That system would simultaneously be able to assist the electricity transmission system by doing a parallel transmission from North to South at times of high North-South power traffic. How acceptable each of these propositions is to key social stakeholders (including policy makers, prospective business, and public end-users) will be integral to their real-world viability, and so will be examined here also.