Data provision has become increasingly fundamental to the way Northern Powergrid invests in its electricity distribution network to service the rapidly changing generation and consumption trends of all its stakeholders and customers. One of our biggest commitments is to achieve net zero in electricity generation by 2035 across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire region.
“We are accelerating smart-grid control and monitoring for local green energy sources in near real-time, empowering local providers of green energy to viably participate in network service to help meet demand through the supply of operational power flow data. This participation also assists deliver savings in the costs of operating our network.” tells Gillian Williamson, Head of System Forecasting at Northern Powergrid (NPg).
Northern Powergrid have launched a new Open Data Portal to provide more network data with easy access self-serve functionality so that customers can check opportunities for providing network services, create their own maps and charts, and apply for feasible connections.
Northern Powergrid’s Open Data Portal allows users and planning experts to explore the growing Data Sets, locate our assets on Maps, browse Charts, our API, and support Documentation (including helpful User Guides to get started) and publish your own data.
A valuable feature of the NPg Open Data Portal is that any user can overlay and visualise their data sets alongside Northern Powergrid’s Data Sets.
Just released are incredibly useful Network Availability Heat Maps for both Generation and Demand, which provide a high-level traffic light overview (red, amber, and green) to signal to developers where the network is operating at or below current limits and still has capacity to satisfy new connections. Conversely, illustrating in detail to potential Flexibility Service Providers where there may be incentive opportunities to promptly accommodate the need for more power to a community.
Communities should sign up to explore all the menus and utilise the Search box to find the data they are looking for. If you can’t find specific data, submit a request through the contact form and our team will respond to guide you or work with you to add a new Data Set, making the portal even richer in content for all users. We value requests so we can ensure we collaboratively design the portal with you and for you.
The landing page and menus are undergoing continual improvement, so please bookmark the page and if you’d like to register to be alerted to Data Set Updates, again, send us a message via the Contact Form. We will shortly be publishing video user guides and use cases on how others have used particular data sets to inform their organisations data gaps to accomplish their goals.
Many of you have already been made aware of our Community DSO Innovation Project, financed by £12.45 million NIC (Network Innovation Competition) funding, for which we are seeking four unique energy Communities already with a 50%+ blend of LCT (Low Carbon Technologies) uptake to join consortiums. The Project will explore how different types of communities in our operational area can rapidly decarbonise and what this means to the operation of all distribution networks. This five-year project will present a great platform for further enhancing the effectiveness of our open data approach and what data is required to enable our region’s communities plans.
“Community DSO will help develop a dashboard that will give visibility to communities on their energy consumption and help them optimise their use, production of electricity and opportunities to provide services working within network constraints for a whole system that will benefit all” added Gill.
Northern Powergrid values feedback from Community Energy England stakeholders to enrich our Open Data Portal and invite you to provide comments directly by emailing opendata@northernpowergrid.com or via the portal’s Contact Form once you’ve signed in.