As society moves towards Net Zero, some people will easily participate in the energy transition, others, either by choice or factors outside their control, will not. To ensure an equitable transition, energy networks need to cater for all consumers. For the first time, VERIFY will combine data on networks, properties, consumer demographics and smart meters to ensure DNOs are able to better tailor network investments to match the needs of local consumers. Collaborating with local authorities, charities, and powerful computing technologies, VERIFY will evaluate the most cost efficient and beneficial solutions for energy networks and consumers alike.

Rural communities face challenges in decarbonising heating systems are more vulnerable to climate change impacts and more likely to be Worst Served Customers (WSCs). Decarbonising these areas could increase electricity demand, exacerbating resilience issues, especially for WSC. Strengthening the electricity network in these areas would be expensive and take time, so alternative solutions are needed. SHARED will explore the potential of low-cost hydrogen production and storage as a solution to improve the resilience of these communities. The project will assess how effective this approach could be and identify the specific needs of rural communities.

Energy efficiency retrofits rolled out by Local Authorities (LAs) and Social Housing Providers (SHPs), such as home insulation and storage heating, represent an opportunity to procure flexibility from disadvantaged households that are typically not able to participate in flexibility markets. Flex Direct aims to develop a new way to procure this type of flexibility by Distribution System Operators (DSOs). The project is developing novel commercial models and coordinated market approaches to enable LAs and SHPs to operate in direct contract with DSOs. This will incentivise use of energy efficiency in flexibility markets and facilitate participation of 'hard-to-reach' customers at scale.

Bristol people and businesses are very concerned about climate change. They want to be part of the solution, see changes which benefit their communities in other ways and have affordable, accessible ways to make a difference. Many businesses and six communities have already created their own Climate Action Plans to describe the changes they want to make happen with 12 more community plans in the pipeline. We want to find a way to achieve these business and community climate goals faster ensuring they are joined-up with the changes we need to make as a whole city. Investment in new low carbon technology is needed to replace the fossil fuel technology which we rely on for heat, power and getting around. Some of these investments will generate a return for investors. We want to demonstrate a way to bring more investment into climate change projects in a way that matches what people want in their home or their area. There are many businesses already supplying climate change solutions in the city, such as builders insulating homes and heat pump installers replacing fossil-fuelled gas boilers. We want to help these businesses to grow to meet the need for climate action and create jobs and training to suit all levels of skills and experience. Bristol Mission Net Zero Pathfinder Demonstrator is an ambitious project to show how people can achieve their climate goals, obtain investment in new ways and grow related businesses to benefit the whole community. The project applies a process for achieving these goals in three Bristol communities, two of which are already discussing climate action. It would create a community climate investment plan for each and search for the investment to make the projects a reality. Plus, create a matching regional climate investment plan and a package of skills support so businesses have capacity to do the work that communities want to see. The lead applicant is Bristol City Council working with Bristol and Bath Regional Capital, Bristol Energy Network, Bristol Green Capital Partnership, Bath and North East Somerset Council, Centre for Sustainable Energy, City Leap Energy Partnership Ltd, National Grid Electricity Distribution (South West), North Somerset Council, South Gloucestershire Council and West of England Combined Authority. The project work would happen in Bristol and the West of England Region. Project findings would be shared through the partners' extensive networks. The project would last for 21 months from January 2024\.

Solar PV is one of the most commercially viable net zero technologies for building energy decarbonisation. Yet despite huge potential only 3.3% of the UK's 29m homes have installed systems. Uptake is hampered by uncertainty over site and rooftop viability and a lack of local, trusted information and support. To accelerate the growth of solar power to the levels recommended by the Climate Change Committee (40GW by 2030) solar PV adopters need support and access to trusted information to assess rooftop viability. Householders want quick, accurate, independent predictions about the potential for PV on their homes. Community groups want to identify buildings within their neighbourhoods that offer the best potential for PV to plan community energy and group solar buying projects. Parish and town councils alongside larger district, unitary and county authorities want to understand the viability of PV for their own buildings and the contribution rooftop solar could make to their climate emergency responses. With funding from the SBRI's Open Digital Solutions for Net Zero Energy, the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) is developing the 'Household and Community Solar Assessment Calculator' as an intuitive web application, based on an innovative methodology which combines national LiDAR data with its own in-house building energy models and wider datasets. The Calculator will provide householders and building owners with free, independent information about PV viability at building level alongside advice on next steps and installation. It will also enable assessment of solar PV potential at local geographies (i.e. ward/parish) with options for users to subscribe to download and analyse wider datasets. CSE is designing and developing the tool in collaboration with Sharenergy (which runs the flagship Big Solar Coop and has supported the establishment of over 60 community solar coops which own and operate solar PV arrays across the UK) and Bath & West Community Energy (installing community-owned solar on schools, public buildings and other non-domestic buildings and with a network of investors interested household PV installations). CSE will also consult widely through community energy and local council networks working on net zero delivery, to ensure that the application is accessible to newcomers to solar PV as well as those who are more informed and in need of further information. The Household and Community Solar Assessment Calculator make the benefits of installing solar PV clearer for individual householders and building owners, accelerate the decision-making process and enable trusted community PV schemes to proliferate.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

Smarter power systems need consumers to engage willingly with a range of new service offers from power system interests to manage demand and shift and/or reduce demand peaks. This project will seek to understand what is needed to secure that engagement from domestic consumers. It will market test a range of potential smart services across two dimensions: (i) automated/passive vs user-controlled active services; and (ii) motivators based on financial rewards vs motivators based on non-financial rewards known to enhance wellbeing. In theory, the system might gain most 'smartness' from automated demand response services taken up by consumers in return for the modest financial value which that response creates for the system. This project will find out whether this holds true in practice for consumers and how consumers respond to different smart approaches based on different motivational rewards.

The rollout of smart electricity meters heralds an explosion in the quantity and resolution of meter data: 500Bn consumption datapoints annually contrasts with the current volume of some 100M meter readings. If leveraged effectively the resulting dataset can support the transition to a low carbon economy by improving the efficiency, sophistication and spatiotemporal disaggregation of system management, from load prediction and demand-side management (DSM) to system balancing. This project will enable the electricity industry to make the required business sense of the data. Using the now finalised Energy Demand Research Project (EDRP) smart meter database it will develop scaleable new approaches to these large volumes of data by: (i) linking to other datasets to add dimensions to the EDRP data; (ii) building an environment for interrogating, analysing, visualising and reporting on patterns in the data. The system will be designed to address a set of identified industry business needs, such as: (a) improved demand prediction algorithms at arbitrary spatiotemporal scales; (b) prediction and verification of distributed DSM interventions; (c) identification of system state signatures for use in automated DSM; (d) visualisation of load profiles to assist network planning and management.