A groundbreaking programme to explore the impact of air conditioning in homes and offices on the power grid has secured further funding.
Teams from power network operator SP Electricity North West will now carry out live customer trials of its innovative project, CoolDown.
The project has secured an additional £5.5m of funding from Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), having previously been awarded £650k to carry out feasibility studies.
CoolDown has been designed to understand and manage the effects of increased use of air conditioning on electricity networks as in the initial phase of the project, research found that more air conditioning units will be adopted and usage will increase.
Over the next two and a half years, specialist engineers will explore the opportunities for air conditioning to operate flexibly with commercial and residential customers, to help balance electricity demand throughout the day and reduce the requirement for additional expensive infrastructure. The impact of increased load on transformer performance during hot summer months will also be investigated in these trials.
SP Electricity North West’s head of innovation, Neil McClymont, said: “Our track record for developing innovative technology is first-class and it’s excellent to be again recognised by Ofgem with further funding.
“We’re all seeing a change in the climate with record-breaking summers and ultimately an increase in the use of air conditioning in homes and offices. It’s important we understand how this impacts the electricity network and more importantly how we can manage it.”
Throughout the research phase, it was found that by 2050, 39 per cent of all buildings in the SP Electricity North West licence area will overheat and 30 per cent of them will install space cooling (SC) such as air conditioning. This is a marked increase on 2023 where only nine per cent overheated and five per cent had SC installed. While SC is already prevalent in commercial buildings, customer research conducted in the first phase revealed a growing domestic trend with 20 per cent of households considering installing SC in the next two years.
SP Electricity North West will deliver this project in conjunction with Guidehouse Europe, UCL Consultants, Impact Research, Oaktree Power, equiwatt, Ricardo-AEA and National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED). The trials will refine and improve the approach and expand the trial area in partnership with NGED to ensure the proposed solutions are scalable across Great Britain.
The purpose of the Strategic Innovation Fund is to support network innovation that will contribute to achieving net zero rapidly and at lowest cost and deliver real net benefits to network companies, energy users and consumers. It aims to work with other public funders of innovation so that activities appropriately funded by energy users and consumers are co-ordinated with activities funded by the Government.
