ESO Innovation has a crucial role to play to ensure businesses and consumers across Great Britain have a reliable, safe, secure and affordable supply of electricity whenever they need it.
Our mission is to support the decarbonisation of the energy system and bridge the gap to net zero. This includes being able to operate a carbon-free grid by 2025 – an important milestone within the Government’s own 2050 net zero target.
Continuing to innovate and adapt the energy system requires various new tools and a reimagining of how the entire industry can come together to deliver lasting impact.
As part of this vision and industry-wide mission, we have started work on an ambitious plan to digitise our energy system. We call it the Virtual Energy System (VirtualES) and it would be a world-first achievement.
The VirtualES will digitise our energy system by providing a real-time replica of how our entire energy landscape will work in parallel to our physical system. This framework will enable us to share data and create scenarios to make our decision-making more robust and inform how we generate, manage, store, and consume energy as part of our mission to achieve net zero.
As part of this vision and industry-wide mission, we have started work on an ambitious plan to digitise our energy system
The VirtualES will provide new opportunities for innovation, by making huge quantities of data and system scenarios to the industry to drive more efficient services for consumers.
The programme is based on an open framework, with agreed access, operations and security protocols. Over time, this is populated by existing and new digital twins – replicas of physical components of our energy system. Each digital twin will contribute to and access real-time data on the status and operation of other elements of the system. This layered data generates insight, and a virtual environment through which we can innovate new ideas, with the potential to transform the system and support our transition to net zero.
The VirtualES will be available to the entire industry with the individual security access protocols and will rely upon a high level of engagement and open collaboration to allow continuous development and unlock its full benefits. We are calling on every element of Britain’s energy industry to lend its support, expertise and investment.
We have appointed professional services firm Arup to work in collaboration with global non-profit organisation, Icebreaker One, and leading energy system innovation centre, Energy Systems Catapult, to create the key principles of the common framework that will underpin VirtualES. These principles serve as a ‘blueprint’, enabling multiple parties to develop digital twins which are interoperable and can interact with the VirtualES using open data.
In addition to being used by industry and in the longerterm, consumers, it is anticipated that the VirtualES will offer widespread benefits to government departments, regulators, academics and think-tanks, informing strategies, policies and regulatory decisions to advance net-zero transition.
Earlier this year, we were awarded a Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) grant by Ofgem to support the development of the principles and technical framework of the VirtualES. With this Discovery phase now completed, we have applied for the next step under the SIF programme to help fund the project.
Britain has one of the most reliable and fastest decarbonising electricity systems in the world and VirtualES will be the tool to support our mission to operate a zero-carbon electricity system which is secure, resilient and fair for all.
