Energy Exemplar to help National Grid ESO shape energy transition

• As part of a multi-year agreement Energy Exemplar will provide National Grid ESO, Britain’s Electricity System Operator with the PLEXOS software and Cloud platform;
• This will provide National Grid ESO with a greatly enhanced capability to model future energy scenarios and required upgrades to the national electricity transmission network, to enable the transition to a decarbonised energy system, including the cost-efficient integration of new technologies in large scale renewables, green hydrogen and other areas;
• The expanded planning and modelling capabilities will also allow for co-optimised planning with the UK gas network, supporting National Grid ESO in its transition to the energy future system operator, responsible for long term planning on both the national gas and electricity networks.
  
  

17 August 2022 – LONDON: National Grid Electricity System Operator and Energy Exemplar have today announced a multi-year agreement to use the unified energy market simulation platform, PLEXOS. National Grid ESO will use PLEXOS to identify cost-efficient grid expansion priorities to enable the transition to a carbon-neutral UK energy system.

PLEXOS modelling software enables users to plan for a cost optimal and reliable future energy system for the next 20 to 30 years in line with Britain’s ambitious climate commitments as well as regulatory and market requirements.

This new data modelling tool will help to shape future versions of the Future Energy Scenarios, which set out potential pathways to net-zero by or before 2050. PLEXOS will also help shape the Network Operations Assessment report, a regulatory required document published by the National Grid ESO each year with recommendations for which transmission system reinforcement projects should receive investment.

PLEXOS was selected for its versatility, supporting nodal modelling for more granular future planning, co-optimisation of power and gas, as well as scalable cloud computation infrastructure. It will support offshore network modelling for proposed wind turbine farms, model and help minimise the probability of outages (LOLP) and provide a higher level of integration and automation of current processes to the National Grid ESO experts. Also included are Energy Exemplar’s full European Datasets to analyse the integration of the UK into the neighbouring European energy market.