Millions of Electricity North West household customers will be included in Schneider Electric‘s smart grid deployment for the region, the company said.
Schneider Electric won a three-year contract to design, deliver and integrate a Distribution Management System (DMS) for the power enterprise.
2.4 million properties and more than five million people will be part of the scheme, which the company said is the foundation of smart grid technology in the region.
The DMS will control energy distribution, identify and self-heal outages, as well as gather and integrate grid and external data to improve efficiency of the network.
The solution will be automated to respond to any changes in the network by using algorithms but it will still support decisions made by control room and field personnel.
SE added that the project aims to better equip the network to manage the peaks and troughs of supply and demand, as more intermittent energy sources are introduced to the grid. Also, as the load becomes more dynamic and difficult to predict, the DNOs need high levels of asset automation to drive operational efficiency and resilience.
Forecasters predict that by 2020 ten million UK homes will have installed solar panels and number of electric vehicles sold will increase to 6.4 million by 2023 increasing network power demand.
Barrie Cressey, Smart Grid Director at Schneider Electric said: "A smarter grid is vital to put the UK on track to meet the European objective of becoming a low-carbon economy by 2050, as well as allowing energy distributors (DNOs) to meet the goals outlined by Ofgem in the new eight year Price Control Period (RIIO-ED1).
Steve Cox, Head of Engineering at Electricity North West said: "Over the next eight years, the existing energy infrastructure, designed for a one way flow of energy, will have to deal with a level of complexity never before seen. Future-proofing our systems to cope with this change was absolutely paramount in our choice of who to work with.
"The modularity of the system that Schneider Electric is able to provide means that we can expand and improve our system according to our needs. Investing in an intelligent grid is vital for us as a business, for our customers and for the UK as a whole."
