Active Networks - can they deliver?

As the demand for energy, along with the focus on the impact that its production has on our environment, rapidly climbs, the UK power sector is faced with its newest, toughest, and most exciting challenge yet. The introduction of a wave of new thinking, new methods, and new technologies to simultaneously meet energy demands and reduce CO₂ emissions is contributing to the realisation of a whole new world of challenges for our country's ageing infrastructure. The introduction of dynamic, and at times unpredictable, new methods of generation, such as wave and wind, leaves the sector poised to tackle the ‘hows‘ and the ‘how much‘. Active network management goes some way in helping to address these issues with a way of thinking which certainly didn’t cross the minds of our ‘hard-wired’ predecessors. Distributed generation, energy storage, networks that think; responding to power outages, surges, and all the other problems we’re starting to see as we begin to treat the network in ways we never thought we’d have to. This presentation describes how the project, Aura-NMS (Autonomous Regional Active Network Management System), is endeavouring to incorporate a number of innovative products and research ideas to help move the networks into an active, dynamic, and real-time environment by decentralising control from the control centres themselves.