Tier 2 trials

The Capacity to Customers (C2C) project will trial a method to quickly release the network capacity that our customers will need for a low-carbon future. In May 2011, Ofgem announced that Electricity North West’s ‘Capacity to Customers’ bid for the 2011 contest had passed the initial screening process for funding under Tier 2 of the Low Carbon Networks Fund.

As the UK moves towards a low carbon economy, the decarbonisation of transportation, heat and electricity production will result in increased demands on electricity networks. Traditional capital intensive approaches to meeting these increased demands are likely to be slow and expensive, hampering the achievement of the UK's emissions targets. Network operators need to quickly and economically enable customers to have access to the UK networks' inherent spare capacity.

All networks contain redundancy and spare capacity to ensure security of supply; however actual usage of the spare capacity is extremely low. With (C2C), Electricity North West proposes to demonstrate a low risk transferable solution which releases the network's spare capacity through adaptive network automation and real time demand-side and/or generation-side management. The proposed Method will reduce the need for traditional reinforcement, significantly cutting the cost and time required to provide new connections, whilst also enhancing quality of supply for customers.

Steve Johnson, Chief Executive, talks about an innovative bid to Ofgem's Low Carbon Networks Fund.