About the Project
What will the UK electricity grid look like in the future? The options are endless! No one knows the answer, but one thing is certain: big changes are required in order to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels if we are serious about the need to dramatically lower our carbon dioxide emissions.
We have attempted to draw some conclusions of our own by carrying out a scenario based study using EnergyPLAN, looking into various potential reconfiguration options for the UK electricity network by 2050. In a nutshell, what we have done is made an estimation of the level of demand in the future and created a range of low carbon supply mix scenarios to assess the degree to which the demand can be met in each case.
This is not an optimisation project; the intention is not to conclude with a ‘best way forward’ option. It is merely to investigate a range of ‘what if’ scenarios to identify resulting trends in terms of how well certain combinations of supply technologies can operate together to match supply with demand and ultimately, keep the lights on.
Click on Approach in the header to read our project aim, objectives and scope. This area of the website covers all of the background in terms of how we approached the project and methodology used. How did we estimate the demand in 2050? How did we decide which software to use? How did we verify the software so that we were sure it was capable of meeting our requirements? It's all in there.
Find out about the energy supply technologies which were included in our models by reading the information supplied in the Low Carbon Technologies section. Within 2014 UK Grid, you will find details about our baseline year from which we could draw comparisons and conclusions. It contains detail on the supply and demand profiles dynamically over the course of the year. These technical areas formed the backbone of our model inputs.
The Results and Conclusions sections are fairly self explanatory! Here you can see a selection of the raw data outputs which we could use to carry out feasibility studies. This allowed us to make a variety of general conclusions.
We have attempted to draw some conclusions of our own by carrying out a scenario based study using EnergyPLAN, looking into various potential reconfiguration options for the UK electricity network by 2050. In a nutshell, what we have done is made an estimation of the level of demand in the future and created a range of low carbon supply mix scenarios to assess the degree to which the demand can be met in each case.
This is not an optimisation project; the intention is not to conclude with a ‘best way forward’ option. It is merely to investigate a range of ‘what if’ scenarios to identify resulting trends in terms of how well certain combinations of supply technologies can operate together to match supply with demand and ultimately, keep the lights on.
Click on Approach in the header to read our project aim, objectives and scope. This area of the website covers all of the background in terms of how we approached the project and methodology used. How did we estimate the demand in 2050? How did we decide which software to use? How did we verify the software so that we were sure it was capable of meeting our requirements? It's all in there.
Find out about the energy supply technologies which were included in our models by reading the information supplied in the Low Carbon Technologies section. Within 2014 UK Grid, you will find details about our baseline year from which we could draw comparisons and conclusions. It contains detail on the supply and demand profiles dynamically over the course of the year. These technical areas formed the backbone of our model inputs.
The Results and Conclusions sections are fairly self explanatory! Here you can see a selection of the raw data outputs which we could use to carry out feasibility studies. This allowed us to make a variety of general conclusions.
Download our group final presentation below, which was presented on Industry day to invoke questions and debates around the topic.
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