speaker-0: Publish with GHD, where ideas connect.
speaker-1: Next Well, welcome to the Nexus Podcast. I'm Ben Hall, Global Thought Leadership Manager at GHD. Today we're looking at one of the most important and least visible shifts in the energy transition, active grid control. As renewables, electrification, and distributed energy reshape our networks, the real question isn't just how much we build, it's how intelligently we operate. Well, joining me is Ian Lloyd, Technical Director for Network Innovation for GHD in the UK. Ian, great to have you with us.
speaker-0: Yeah, thank you Ben. Nice to be here.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's great to hear. Look, Ian, let's start. ⁓ you have an article on Nexus, which talks about a quiet revolution happening beneath the physical infrastructure of the energy transition. What's changing in our networks that makes active control so critical right now?
speaker-0: think Ben, one of the most significant changes is that the grid has gone from a one-way, a unidirectional delivery network into a real-time balancing system with more wind, more solar, more electrification, more distributed resources that are peppered across our networks. We've got variability, bidirectional flows, lower inertia in different places, so stability doesn't come for free anymore in terms of... having so many hundreds of tons of spinning reserve power systems that are connected to the network. That's why active grid control matters. It's the intelligence layer now that keeps reliability high while unlocking data flexibility for the future.
speaker-1: As as you mentioned, historically networks were passive and largely unidirectional. And so what does it mean in practical terms to move to this dynamic bidirectional system you you've just spoken about? And why can't traditional control approaches cope with that shift?
speaker-0: So in practical terms, power now does flow both ways. It's also peppered across the network. So we're not anchored by big power stations that are centralized within certain areas of the country that feed transmission networks. These power systems now, they do feed both ways. So they're bidirectional. Customers can generate, they can store, they can shift demands. Constraints appear locally and very quickly. Everything happens very quickly in terms of the electrical domain. things can get exciting very rapidly and not always in a good sense. And so those traditional approaches were built for predictable loads. And really, so like if we discuss some of the deterministic engineering that was involved in the delivery of the power networks that we're used to, and we've been very reliant on them for over 100 years, right? And there's been many thousands of very knowledgeable brains that have aided the engineering and the design and the predictability about the controlling the scheduling of the generation that has been critically important for the centralized systems. But yet they've had much slower operator responses. People have had time just to be able to sort of finesse exactly what they should naturally do. A good analogy, Ben, right, is when I first started in the industry, people started discussing about how they schedule generation to come onto the network. And that scheduling of generation was based on a number of different variable factors. It would be the time of the year, it would be the weather forecast, it would be the predicted load uptake, and then in a world where there was only three or four TV channels, the TV times would act as a very strong guide for the likely pick-up of load. And I remember certain scenarios where the World Cup, or half-time in the World Cup, caused such a... a big load increase with everybody putting on their kettles, right, that it caused a real concern. So that deterministic state has somewhat shifted away and today we need better visibility, some faster coordination of many hundreds or maybe even millions of future assets that are peppered across the networks, otherwise we'll end up curtailing renewables, firefighting faults, over-reinforcing networks or taking more operational risks.
speaker-1: Yeah, and you mentioned, you know, the the kettle analogy. I mean, not just the the grid sisters, but pretty much everything these days, a lot more complex than they used to be, is that and it's the same, isn't it, for for where you're working.
speaker-0: It's absolutely the same and the variability of technologies, the locational situation about naturally where they exist, becomes a very active component in terms of the new control systems that are required for the future.
speaker-1: You outlined primary, secondary, tertiary, and even emerging ordinary control layers. Can you break down how that hierarchy works in in simple terms or plain terms and why that architecture is so important for resilience?
speaker-0: There's always a hierarchy of control solutions that sit within power systems networks. Primary control is, in all instances, really the engineered control solutions that make sure that our networks are responsive and they can be fast in terms of their detection of faults, the clearing of faults, the management of voltage control and keeping frequency stable. So these things, that they happen in a sub-second layer and they're normally coordinated down at control solutions design. Secondary layer is the coordination of these assets over seconds to minutes. They're correcting deviations, managing constraints, identifying violations of threshold breaches, and then conjuring up mechanisms just to be able to manage them. Tertiary level is somewhat the market level or the aggregated level around how we begin to look at the long-term scheduling of loads, right, and their predicted impact that they'll have on the network. So we'll schedule storage, we'll schedule demand, we'll understand about where flexibility exists on the networks. And then we'll begin to be able to utilize market pricing and signals just to be able to drive that flexibility when it's required. Quaternary, this is an emerging state and it's an alien term probably for the many. And it's looking towards really where the system orchestration will naturally need to exist when we have multiple vectors that start to become apparent. You'll see some people talking about power to x. X, right, and that X is heat and transport and electrification and hydrogenation, right, so a variety of new technologies that can use electricity as the power source, right, to be able to generate those impacts in different energy vectors. Interestingly, in the UK, I think, there's an opportunity really where the UK transmission system operator has recently rebranded to the National Energy Systems Operator. and that transmission moves away from just electricity to it being focused on a full energy solution which is the power to X select conundrum that's likely to exist in the future.
speaker-1: One of the most compelling parts of of your piece, I thought, was what you call the ⁓ the investment paradox, the need to deploy control capability before visible system stress appears. So why is waiting for constraints to materialize such a risky strategy?
speaker-0: The paradox is always an interesting conundrum, right, because it's so controversial in many different instances. But waiting is risky because control capability takes a significant amount of time. It doesn't happen overnight. There's a whole variety of infrastructure layers that are attached to what is required for the active control solution. So there's whole communications layer, there's a whole data models layer, there's a whole operating procedures and learned skills. and none of those things can appear overnight. If you wait until the constraints are obvious, you're already in a reactive cycle. You're dealing with more faults, with more congestion, with more connection queues, with more containment of renewable green generation and more expensive reinforcement and potentially in the wrong locations. So investing earlier lets you defer upgrades, some outages and actually extract some value from flexibility markets. and the data that becomes available from active control systems. So this is just a more proactive method of being able to manage those problems.
speaker-1: As systems become more digital and AI enabled, what new skills do utilities and operators need?
speaker-0: There's a variety of new skills. So in terms of like there's a human factor that's attached to that. And maybe we can focus on that in a wee while, but there's a lot of new knowledge that is necessary, right, for that investment select criteria. There's a shift in terms of help. how people can become knowledgeable about what an active power system naturally means and the data models that naturally sit behind them. It's very different from the connectivity models that currently exist where full electrical power flow models are required just to be able to select to release the benefits of the intelligence that is possible with the new active control systems.
speaker-1: Now, I know you're a keen golfer, so I'm gonna try out ⁓ one of my own analogies if you don't mind. On a golf course, power without control doesn't wing you the round. And I think you know that. It's all about course management, shot selection, and those little adjustments that really count. Is the grid facing a similar moment where precision and orchestration now matter more than just raw generation capacity?
speaker-0: What a wonderful game full of elations and frustrations, right? It's it's
speaker-1: Probably very appropriate for what you're you're doing, is that right? The ups and downs that that
speaker-0: It's a leveler for all involved. I've I've seen, I've seen solicitors and judges and, know what and you see, you see presidents playing golf and they're all leveled, right, by a game that's, that's, that's virtually impossible. It's never possible to master it, right? But it's, it is a good fit in terms of your analogy. Golf, raw power does help, right? And especially you see that at the elite level on, you know what mean, tour golf, but real scoring at a normal. golf layer, if I can call it that, so select my level. And that comes from managing your mistakes, right? It deals with course management and making those small adjustments. It is somewhat similar. Adding megawatts isn't always enough if you can't orchestrate them, though it probably does offer some options if you locate those megawatts correctly and you have enough of them to overcome some. system security concerns around about so like when the sun shines or when the wind blows, right? So, but ultimately precision is where control comes in. On a grid, we can manage voltage, if we can manage constraints, if we can manage storage and flexible demands, that's what turns the real capacity of megawatts onto the grid into a reliable economic operation. I guess it's how we play the course of the energy transition, right? Is there a link back to
speaker-1: That's a good way to finish it. And many thanks for your insights there on how we can shape tomorrow's grid.
speaker-0: You're very welcome, Ben. Thank you for having me.
speaker-1: Yeah, if you'd like to read Ian Lloyd's full article, head to the Nexus homepage. And if you haven't done so already, feel free to subscribe to Nexus for weekly and quarterly articles, podcasts and video insights exploring the future of energy and infrastructure. You can subscribe through the homepage. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Brought to you by Nexus.
speaker-0: you Published by GHD, where I...
speaker-1: Ideas Connect.
speaker-1: Next Well, welcome to the Nexus Podcast. I'm Ben Hall, Global Thought Leadership Manager at GHD. Today we're looking at one of the most important and least visible shifts in the energy transition, active grid control. As renewables, electrification, and distributed energy reshape our networks, the real question isn't just how much we build, it's how intelligently we operate. Well, joining me is Ian Lloyd, Technical Director for Network Innovation for GHD in the UK. Ian, great to have you with us.
speaker-0: Yeah, thank you Ben. Nice to be here.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's great to hear. Look, Ian, let's start. ⁓ you have an article on Nexus, which talks about a quiet revolution happening beneath the physical infrastructure of the energy transition. What's changing in our networks that makes active control so critical right now?
speaker-0: think Ben, one of the most significant changes is that the grid has gone from a one-way, a unidirectional delivery network into a real-time balancing system with more wind, more solar, more electrification, more distributed resources that are peppered across our networks. We've got variability, bidirectional flows, lower inertia in different places, so stability doesn't come for free anymore in terms of... having so many hundreds of tons of spinning reserve power systems that are connected to the network. That's why active grid control matters. It's the intelligence layer now that keeps reliability high while unlocking data flexibility for the future.
speaker-1: As as you mentioned, historically networks were passive and largely unidirectional. And so what does it mean in practical terms to move to this dynamic bidirectional system you you've just spoken about? And why can't traditional control approaches cope with that shift?
speaker-0: So in practical terms, power now does flow both ways. It's also peppered across the network. So we're not anchored by big power stations that are centralized within certain areas of the country that feed transmission networks. These power systems now, they do feed both ways. So they're bidirectional. Customers can generate, they can store, they can shift demands. Constraints appear locally and very quickly. Everything happens very quickly in terms of the electrical domain. things can get exciting very rapidly and not always in a good sense. And so those traditional approaches were built for predictable loads. And really, so like if we discuss some of the deterministic engineering that was involved in the delivery of the power networks that we're used to, and we've been very reliant on them for over 100 years, right? And there's been many thousands of very knowledgeable brains that have aided the engineering and the design and the predictability about the controlling the scheduling of the generation that has been critically important for the centralized systems. But yet they've had much slower operator responses. People have had time just to be able to sort of finesse exactly what they should naturally do. A good analogy, Ben, right, is when I first started in the industry, people started discussing about how they schedule generation to come onto the network. And that scheduling of generation was based on a number of different variable factors. It would be the time of the year, it would be the weather forecast, it would be the predicted load uptake, and then in a world where there was only three or four TV channels, the TV times would act as a very strong guide for the likely pick-up of load. And I remember certain scenarios where the World Cup, or half-time in the World Cup, caused such a... a big load increase with everybody putting on their kettles, right, that it caused a real concern. So that deterministic state has somewhat shifted away and today we need better visibility, some faster coordination of many hundreds or maybe even millions of future assets that are peppered across the networks, otherwise we'll end up curtailing renewables, firefighting faults, over-reinforcing networks or taking more operational risks.
speaker-1: Yeah, and you mentioned, you know, the the kettle analogy. I mean, not just the the grid sisters, but pretty much everything these days, a lot more complex than they used to be, is that and it's the same, isn't it, for for where you're working.
speaker-0: It's absolutely the same and the variability of technologies, the locational situation about naturally where they exist, becomes a very active component in terms of the new control systems that are required for the future.
speaker-1: You outlined primary, secondary, tertiary, and even emerging ordinary control layers. Can you break down how that hierarchy works in in simple terms or plain terms and why that architecture is so important for resilience?
speaker-0: There's always a hierarchy of control solutions that sit within power systems networks. Primary control is, in all instances, really the engineered control solutions that make sure that our networks are responsive and they can be fast in terms of their detection of faults, the clearing of faults, the management of voltage control and keeping frequency stable. So these things, that they happen in a sub-second layer and they're normally coordinated down at control solutions design. Secondary layer is the coordination of these assets over seconds to minutes. They're correcting deviations, managing constraints, identifying violations of threshold breaches, and then conjuring up mechanisms just to be able to manage them. Tertiary level is somewhat the market level or the aggregated level around how we begin to look at the long-term scheduling of loads, right, and their predicted impact that they'll have on the network. So we'll schedule storage, we'll schedule demand, we'll understand about where flexibility exists on the networks. And then we'll begin to be able to utilize market pricing and signals just to be able to drive that flexibility when it's required. Quaternary, this is an emerging state and it's an alien term probably for the many. And it's looking towards really where the system orchestration will naturally need to exist when we have multiple vectors that start to become apparent. You'll see some people talking about power to x. X, right, and that X is heat and transport and electrification and hydrogenation, right, so a variety of new technologies that can use electricity as the power source, right, to be able to generate those impacts in different energy vectors. Interestingly, in the UK, I think, there's an opportunity really where the UK transmission system operator has recently rebranded to the National Energy Systems Operator. and that transmission moves away from just electricity to it being focused on a full energy solution which is the power to X select conundrum that's likely to exist in the future.
speaker-1: One of the most compelling parts of of your piece, I thought, was what you call the ⁓ the investment paradox, the need to deploy control capability before visible system stress appears. So why is waiting for constraints to materialize such a risky strategy?
speaker-0: The paradox is always an interesting conundrum, right, because it's so controversial in many different instances. But waiting is risky because control capability takes a significant amount of time. It doesn't happen overnight. There's a whole variety of infrastructure layers that are attached to what is required for the active control solution. So there's whole communications layer, there's a whole data models layer, there's a whole operating procedures and learned skills. and none of those things can appear overnight. If you wait until the constraints are obvious, you're already in a reactive cycle. You're dealing with more faults, with more congestion, with more connection queues, with more containment of renewable green generation and more expensive reinforcement and potentially in the wrong locations. So investing earlier lets you defer upgrades, some outages and actually extract some value from flexibility markets. and the data that becomes available from active control systems. So this is just a more proactive method of being able to manage those problems.
speaker-1: As systems become more digital and AI enabled, what new skills do utilities and operators need?
speaker-0: There's a variety of new skills. So in terms of like there's a human factor that's attached to that. And maybe we can focus on that in a wee while, but there's a lot of new knowledge that is necessary, right, for that investment select criteria. There's a shift in terms of help. how people can become knowledgeable about what an active power system naturally means and the data models that naturally sit behind them. It's very different from the connectivity models that currently exist where full electrical power flow models are required just to be able to select to release the benefits of the intelligence that is possible with the new active control systems.
speaker-1: Now, I know you're a keen golfer, so I'm gonna try out ⁓ one of my own analogies if you don't mind. On a golf course, power without control doesn't wing you the round. And I think you know that. It's all about course management, shot selection, and those little adjustments that really count. Is the grid facing a similar moment where precision and orchestration now matter more than just raw generation capacity?
speaker-0: What a wonderful game full of elations and frustrations, right? It's it's
speaker-1: Probably very appropriate for what you're you're doing, is that right? The ups and downs that that
speaker-0: It's a leveler for all involved. I've I've seen, I've seen solicitors and judges and, know what and you see, you see presidents playing golf and they're all leveled, right, by a game that's, that's, that's virtually impossible. It's never possible to master it, right? But it's, it is a good fit in terms of your analogy. Golf, raw power does help, right? And especially you see that at the elite level on, you know what mean, tour golf, but real scoring at a normal. golf layer, if I can call it that, so select my level. And that comes from managing your mistakes, right? It deals with course management and making those small adjustments. It is somewhat similar. Adding megawatts isn't always enough if you can't orchestrate them, though it probably does offer some options if you locate those megawatts correctly and you have enough of them to overcome some. system security concerns around about so like when the sun shines or when the wind blows, right? So, but ultimately precision is where control comes in. On a grid, we can manage voltage, if we can manage constraints, if we can manage storage and flexible demands, that's what turns the real capacity of megawatts onto the grid into a reliable economic operation. I guess it's how we play the course of the energy transition, right? Is there a link back to
speaker-1: That's a good way to finish it. And many thanks for your insights there on how we can shape tomorrow's grid.
speaker-0: You're very welcome, Ben. Thank you for having me.
speaker-1: Yeah, if you'd like to read Ian Lloyd's full article, head to the Nexus homepage. And if you haven't done so already, feel free to subscribe to Nexus for weekly and quarterly articles, podcasts and video insights exploring the future of energy and infrastructure. You can subscribe through the homepage. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Brought to you by Nexus.
speaker-0: you Published by GHD, where I...
speaker-1: Ideas Connect.
