Forecasting Climate Change Impacts on Urban Electricity Distribution Network Loads

Growing electricity demand and on-site generation in urban areas means that urban electricity networks require significant reinforcement. Much of the £43 billion that distribution network operators (DNOs) in the UK are forecast to spend out to 2050 on reinforcing the electricity networks feeding UK homes and businesses is expected to be deployed in constrained urban areas. While DNOs currently have access to load forecasting tools to plan this investment process by specific region and individual asset, there is currently no way of quantifying how climate change impacts on demand (e.g. more summer cooling and less winter heating) and distributed generation (e.g. changing average solar insolation and wind levels) will influence the extent of urban network upgrades required. To solve this problem, we will research and develop a full commercial tool integrating Met Office climate forecast data with DNO load data to identify the size and network location of potential climate change load impacts on urban electricity networks, resolved to individual network assets (all London primary substations in the first instance) under various climate change scenarios.