Low Carbon Ready

Kent Active System Management (KASM)

Project Data

Start date:

02/01/2015

End date:

01/12/2017

Budget:

£3.9m

Summary

The award-winning Kent Active System Management (KASM) project demonstrated GB’s first use of real-time power system modelling and short term forecasting on electricity distribution networks. The success of the project meant we connected an additional 4Mwh of renewable energy.

What is the project about?

The operating area of East Kent in the South Eastern Power Networks license area provides a perfect example of the operational and planning challenges that arise when large amounts of intermittent wind and solar generation are connected to a distribution network with limited local demand.

The KASM project will deliver enhanced visibility and analysis capabilities regarding the power flows and stability of the 132 kV network to control room engineers and outage and network planners.

These capabilities enabled UK Power Networks to:

Manage the network in real-time in order to improve reliability;
Reduce congestion and better manage planned and unplanned network outages;
Improve long-term planning capabilities to anticipate network capacity issues thus improving the reliability and capacity of the network.

How we’re doing it

The Kent Active System Management project has been designed to address a number of pragmatic issues related to reliability, capacity, and outage planning. The project will:

Install a communication link between the UK Power Networks control room and National Grid’s control room;
Install a contingency analysis software tool in UK Power Networks control room;
Develop complementary forecasting capabilities for load and generation in UK Power Networks control room; and
Trial the use of the above tools in real-time, short-term, and long-term use cases.

What makes it innovative

The project will demonstrate the use of contingency analysis in the control room of a GB DNO for the first time; control rooms do not currently have real-time data handling capacity. The conclusions and learning achieved from the project will be instrumental in helping other DNOs implement similar solutions, thus taking a first step in modernising the GB distribution network.

It will also bring together for first time DNO and TSO real-time data in the control room and that is significant difference when compared to the existing transmission network deployments of contingency analysis software.

What we’re learning

The project demonstrated the use of real time contingency analysis in the control room of a GB DNO for the first time. The conclusions and learning achieved from the project was instrumental in helping other DNOs implement similar solutions, thus taking a first step in modernising the GB distribution network.

The operation of the system once installed provided major opportunities for learning. Operating procedures were changed to incorporate the use of the Contingency Analysis and forecasting platform, which enabled the formal reporting of how frequently and effectively it is utilised.

Reports & Documents

Full Submission

Final Project Report

SDRC 9.2 – Contingency Analysis System Integration

SDRC 9.3 – Installation of Forecasting Modules

SDRC 9.4 – Demonstration of use of real time contingency analysis

SDRC 9.5 – Completion of KASM trials

SDR 9.6 – Development of Business Design

Images & Videos

Innovation Project 2018 - Kent Active System Management

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Kent Active System Management (KASM)

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Project Data