City Science developed the Digital Twins Project for Advanced Collaborative Energy System Planning as part of the Innovate UK Digital Twin Energy Grids Competition.
Overview
City Science have secured funding from Innovate UK to address the critical challenges faced in adopting a digital twin of energy systems.
This project has harmonised and combined open datasets provided by Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) to create a robust, interoperable, and scalable solution which will enable energy system planners, local area energy analysts, and project managers to scope potential work and plan for future infrastructure projects.
Partnering with National Grid Energy Distribution (NGED) and Space Clippers, the project supports the wider aims to improve cyber resilience of energy systems and deploy innovative technologies, data, and information across the UK’s energy networks.
Challenge
Digital twins of the energy network are limited to one or two Distributed Network Operators (DNOs) preventing large-scale disaster recovery scenario testing. This project addresses these issues by harmonising and platforming open datasets from the different DNOs into Cadence, City Science’s flagship GIS product.
Approach
City Science analysed and harmonised a range of DNO datasets as part of this project. The datasets were successfully ingested and platformed into Cadence, including:
- Grid, Bulk, Primary and Secondary substation locations as well as their distribution areas.
- We have also harmonised EHV, HV, and LV cables, towers, and pylons.
- Ingested the National Embedded Capacity Register (ECR) produced by Northern Power Grid.
- Ingested other datasets released by DNOs such as Generation Headroom.
- Ingested Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) in Cadence.
City Science also:
- Created the first openly available map of demand headroom. This is visualised in Cadence with a harmonised RAG scale highlighting areas of demand constraint.
- Created a substation connectivity layer within the demand visualisation tool in Cadence which can used to visualise either connectivity or demand headroom.
Achievements
This project would be the first open datasets of electrical infrastructure across Great Britain, including substations, distribution areas, pylons, and cables. This is also a first-of-its kind digital twin tool provided under a free user licence, with exportable and API-accessible data. In addition, as part of this project, we had;
- 1,800+ overlays added in Cadence.
- 995 active users in the last month of the project.
- 300+ total webinar participants.
- 60% uplift in new Cadence users in the last month of the project.
- 92 new datasets in Cadence.
Future Outlook
We will continue to build on the foundations laid in this project to automate the data cleansing and harmonisation of DNO datasets, while collaborating with Space Clippers and National Grid Electricity Distribution to support further 3D innovations within this sector.
To find out more, follow us on LinkedIn or contact us on info@cityscience.com.
