Constellation

How we’re doing it

We’re determined to facilitate Net Zero by innovating to free up capacity for more renewable energy, electric vehicles and electric heating. To do that, we need to upgrade the capabilities of our local substations to make them more intelligent, digital, coordinated and secure. Constellation is aiming to achieve that by creating a scalable, flexible, future-proofed system for local intelligence that works in partnership with our central network management system. The project focuses on two key methods:

• Local intelligent control, meaning our substations can forecast and analyse local power flows to keep generators already connected to our network running smoothly and efficiently.
• Wide area and adaptive protection, which will allow our substations to communicate with each other using 5G to calculate the most efficient possible configurations and settings to maximise the capacity available for new renewable energy resources.
  Constellation includes experts from several project partners: ABB, General Electric, the University of Strathclyde’s Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC), Siemens and Vodafone.