National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) has been awarded a Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) grant of almost £150,000 to support its development a Virtual Energy System programme – a digital replica of Britain’s entire energy landscape.
Made up of multiple digital twins, the Virtual Energy System will work in parallel to the physical system, affording a virtual environment to share real-time data. The system is designed to enable users to model and predict scenarios that will support the decarbonisation of the energy industry, while supporting a digital-first and sustainable energy network for the future.
Digital twins will be developed by a wide range of industry participants, which will join and interact with one another to better simulate real-world scenarios and help advance innovation.
National Grid ESO said the first step in making this vision a reality is to develop a common framework which can be used to understand what standards should be set out with participants to facilitate collaboration and compatibility.
It is working with a range of project partners and a technical consortium who bring experience in digital twins, systems-thinking, and energy data to the project.
Jonathan Barcroft, common framework workstream lead, National Grid ESO, said: “While the Virtual Energy System aims to foster innovation and development, it’s vital that different pieces of the Digital Twin are compatible and adhere to a Common Framework.
“A project of this ambition, scale and complexity has never been achieved before and the programme will run over several years. This next phase of the Common Framework Project will enable us to explore key considerations for the creation of the Virtual Energy System, including themes such as cyber security, data quality, metadata, legal and regulatory issues, and common attributes of digital twins.
“This grant from the Strategic Innovation Fund will be used to pay for our technical partner to develop the common framework and for our network partners to provide the required subject matter expertise, advancing progress for the development of the Virtual Energy System.”
Earlier this year, it announced that it had appointed Arup, supported by Energy Systems Catapult and Icebreaker One, to help identify and articulate the relevant principles for the technical framework. This will serve as a ‘blueprint’, enabling multiple parties to develop digital twins which are interoperable and can interact with the Virtual Energy System, using open data.
