Northern Powergrid begins £11.4m upgrade programme
NORTHERN POWERGRID has begun an investment programme worth £11.4m on enhancing its remote network management to deliver a smarter power grid for customers.
The firm, which is responsible for the electricity network for eight million people across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, said the investment was part of its ongoing work to deliver net zero development and green growth across the region.
The network operator has awarded EMR Integrated Solutions the contract to deliver a major project to upgrade its secondary Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to an IP (Internet Protocol) communications platform across 7,500 distribution substations.
This project is a key part of Northern Powergrid’s wider £83m smart grid enabler programme which forms the backbone to delivering a more actively managed electricity distribution system to support future energy need as it brings more clean, renewable generation online in the UK.
A spokesperson said: “The investment will enable Northern Powergrid to activate enhanced automation across thousands of substations, centralise control of its remote infrastructure and build a better understanding of customers’ electricity consumption patterns across the grid to provide a responsive service that meets customers’ needs.”
The firm added that customers become increasingly dependent on electricity to power their lives and low carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles and solar panels.
Commenting on the investment, Mark Nicholson, Northern Powergrid’s head of smart grids, said: “This project will enhance network flexibility and build more digital capability to meet our customers’ needs now and in the future.
“It will help facilitate our transition to a Distribution System Operator (DSO) that actively manages varying generation and demands across our grid as our customers become more dependent on electricity to power their lights, heating and transport.
“The ability to remotely operate more of our assets and improve network visibility through collection of real-time monitoring data will help us provide better services to our customers.”
The project is due to be completed across the entire network by March of 2023.