CoolDown

CoolDown has been awarded funding through Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) Round 3 Discovery Phase.

Watch our 60-second project summary video here.

Electricity North West began delivery of this project in March 2024 alongside partners University College London and Guidehouse Europe.

As Britain warms due to climate change, electrification of heat will mean increasing customer access to space cooling, leading to increased summer peak demands. In current distribution network planning, cooling demand is poorly accounted for and based on limited high-level modelling. Additionally, the potential of cooling to provide flexibility during periods of network stress has not been considered.

CoolDown will, for the first time, explore the impact of cooling on network capacity by producing improved uptake and demand projections as well as developing novel commercial models to incentivise and unlock space cooling flexibility, reducing network reinforcement requirements and optimising value for customers.

This project addresses SIF Round 3, Challenge 3, “Unlocking flexibility to accelerate electrification of heat”, and Theme 2, “Improving the value and capture of system benefits from heat flexibility”.

This page will be updated with project learning as we move through the SIF process.