Deutschland hat inzwischen rund 400 Kilometer Wasserstoff-Backbone-Pipeline fertiggestellt und unter Druck gesetzt, ohne angeschlossene Lieferanten und ohne vertraglich gebundene Abnehmer — eine Pipeline von nirgendwo nach nirgendwo. Die Infrastruktur existiert und ist betriebsbereit, aber es fließt kein Wasserstoff zu irgendjemandem, der sich verpflichtet hat, dafür zu bezahlen. Dies ist kein ... [continued]
Stichting Clean Energy and Energy Inclusion for Africa (CEI Africa), through its Crowdlending Window, along with crowdfunding platform Energise Africa, has mobilised $2.9 million in financing to support the development […]
CrossBoundary Access, Africa’s first blended finance platform for mini-grids, and ANKA, a leading mini-grid developer, have completed the acquisition of an asset company owning four operational mini-grid projects in Madagascar. […]
In Short : Santosh Kumar Sarangi, Secretary of MNRE, emphasized that India’s renewable energy focus must evolve from mere capacity addition to strengthening grid infrastructure and domestic manufacturing. He highlighted that integrating renewables efficiently, scaling battery storage, and boosting local manufacturing are critical to sustaining growth, ensuring energy security, and supporting India’s long-term clean energy and decarbonization goals.
In Detail : Santosh Kumar Sarangi, Secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), stressed that India’s renewable energy strategy needs a fundamental shift. While capacity additions have been impressive, the focus must now move toward strengthening grid infrastructure, integrating distributed energy resources, and building a resilient renewable energy ecosystem that can sustain long-term growth.
Sarangi highlighted that India’s record renewable installations have brought the country to the forefront globally, but challenges remain in grid management, intermittency, and storage. To maintain momentum, India must invest in smart grids, flexible transmission networks, and digital solutions that allow renewable energy to be efficiently integrated without compromising reliability.
Another key area Sarangi emphasized is domestic manufacturing. India’s renewable transition cannot rely solely on imports of solar modules, wind turbines, and batteries. Developing local manufacturing capabilities is essential for energy security, reducing costs, creating jobs, and establishing a self-reliant ecosystem for critical clean energy technologies.
The MNRE Secretary also pointed out the importance of energy storage and hybrid solutions. Battery systems, pumped hydro, and other storage technologies are vital to manage variability, provide grid stability, and ensure that high shares of renewable energy can be delivered consistently to consumers and industries.
Sarangi stressed that policy and regulatory frameworks need to evolve in tandem with technological development. Efficient grid integration, market mechanisms for storage and flexibility, and incentives for domestic manufacturing are essential to ensure that India’s renewable push translates into reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective energy systems.
He also highlighted that the transition from capacity addition to infrastructure focus would create multiple economic benefits. Strengthening grid networks and expanding manufacturing can generate jobs, attract investment, and foster technological innovation, positioning India as a global hub for clean energy solutions.
Sarangi emphasized that decentralized energy, such as rooftop solar, community microgrids, and P2P trading, must be integrated into national planning. This requires modern grid architecture and digital monitoring to enable two-way power flows while maintaining stability across regions with varying generation and consumption patterns.
The Secretary called for a collaborative approach involving industry, academia, financial institutions, and government bodies to accelerate the transition. Investments in R&D, skill development, and advanced manufacturing capabilities are crucial for building a robust and resilient renewable ecosystem capable of meeting India’s ambitious climate and energy targets.
Overall, Sarangi’s message underscores that India’s renewable energy journey must now evolve from quantitative growth to qualitative development. By focusing on grid modernization, energy storage, and domestic manufacturing, the country can achieve a sustainable, secure, and self-reliant energy future while strengthening its leadership in the global clean energy transition.
In Short : India is set to begin pilot projects under the India Energy Stack, starting with peer-to-peer electricity trading. The initiative aims to build a unified digital foundation for the power sector, enabling direct energy transactions between consumers and prosumers, improving data interoperability, supporting renewable integration, and transforming the electricity market into a more transparent, decentralized, and technology-driven ecosystem.
In Detail : India is on the verge of launching the first pilot projects under the India Energy Stack, a national digital initiative designed to modernize the country’s power sector. These pilots mark a critical shift from traditional electricity systems toward a digitally enabled framework where data, transactions, and grid operations are integrated through standardized platforms. The initial focus on peer-to-peer electricity trading reflects a growing emphasis on decentralization and consumer participation in energy markets.
The India Energy Stack is being developed as a comprehensive digital backbone for the entire electricity ecosystem. It seeks to connect utilities, regulators, system operators, power producers, and consumers through common digital protocols. By creating a shared infrastructure for data exchange, the stack aims to eliminate silos, improve coordination, and ensure that all stakeholders can operate within a unified and interoperable system.
At the heart of the first pilot is peer-to-peer power trading, a model that allows electricity to be bought and sold directly between users. Prosumers, such as households and businesses with rooftop solar systems or other distributed energy resources, can sell excess electricity to nearby consumers. This creates a more flexible and market-driven environment, reducing dependence on centralized generation and empowering users to actively participate in the energy economy.
This new trading model has the potential to redefine how electricity flows across the grid. Instead of a one-directional system where power moves only from large generators to end consumers, peer-to-peer trading introduces a multi-directional structure. Electricity can flow between multiple points, enabling local energy balancing, reducing transmission losses, and improving overall grid efficiency through smarter digital coordination.
The pilot projects will also test how regulatory frameworks adapt to this evolving market structure. Electricity regulators and distribution companies are expected to play a crucial role in ensuring that peer-to-peer trading remains secure, transparent, and aligned with grid stability requirements. These pilots will help identify policy gaps, technical challenges, and commercial models needed for wider adoption.
Unlike conventional power exchanges, the India Energy Stack will not function as a centralized trading platform. Instead, it will provide open digital standards and interfaces that private technology companies can use to develop innovative applications. These platforms can offer services such as energy trading, billing, settlement, forecasting, and analytics, creating a competitive digital marketplace around electricity services.
A major advantage of this approach is its potential to significantly enhance renewable energy integration. As solar rooftops, battery storage systems, and electric vehicles become more widespread, the digital stack can enable these resources to interact intelligently with the grid. Prosumers can optimize their energy usage, store surplus power, and sell electricity during peak demand periods, making renewables more economically attractive.
Over time, the India Energy Stack could unlock advanced energy services such as real-time pricing, demand response programs, flexible tariffs, and energy-based financial products. Consumers may gain access to personalized energy plans, while utilities can use data-driven insights to improve planning, reduce losses, and enhance system reliability across urban and rural areas alike.
Overall, the India Energy Stack represents a transformative step toward building a digital-first power sector. By enabling peer-to-peer trading and creating a shared technological foundation, the initiative has the potential to reshape electricity markets, empower consumers, accelerate clean energy adoption, and establish a more resilient, transparent, and future-ready energy ecosystem for India.
Battery energy storage projects have emerged as the dominant force in Australia's energy investment landscape, accounting for 46% of the nation's 64GW development pipeline, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator's (AEMO) latest quarterly report.
US sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery technology company Unigrid has begun international shipments of its proprietary sodium cobalt oxide (NCO) cathode cells at commercial volume.
Bigger, longer-duration projects and more sophisticated deal structuring are driving the energy storage industry forward, but a lack of common approaches from transmission system operators (TSOs) remains a challenge.
Preparing to kick off the Burnaby Board of Trade’s 2026 Clean Energy Summit next month felt like the right moment to take inventory. Burnaby sits inside a province where roughly 98% of electricity is already non emitting, hosts a dense cluster of clean energy companies, and also contains a noticeable ... [continued]
Die wichtigste politische Lehre aus dem 400 km langen europäischen Wasserstoff-Backbone-Abschnitt ohne Lieferanten und ohne Abnehmer, einer Pipeline von nirgendwo nach nirgendwo, über den ich kürzlich geschrieben habe, ist, dass Dekarbonisierung an Nachfrage-Realismus scheitert oder gelingt, nicht an technologischer Ambition. Europa wusste bereits Ende der 2000er-Jahre, dass eine tiefgreifende Elektrifizierung ... [continued]
Nearly a decade ago, I gave a presentation at EVBox’s rEVolution conference in Amsterdam. One of the other presenters at the even was the head of The Mobility House, founder and then-CEO Thomas Raffeiner. The company’s focus: vehicle-to-grid technology. It was clear he and The Mobility House had been working ... [continued]
Niger State is collaborating with the Islamic Development Bank on a $163 million solar project to enhance Nigeria's energy security. Several projects across Africa, including floating solar in Nigeria and geothermal expansion in Kenya, showcase the increasing focus on renewable energy to support sustainable development and economic growth while addressing energy challenges.
Nearly a decade ago, I gave a presentation at EVBox’s rEVolution conference in Amsterdam. One of the other presenters at the even was the head of The Mobility House, founder and then-CEO Thomas Raffeiner. The company’s focus: vehicle-to-grid technology. It was clear he and The Mobility House had been working ... [continued]
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has announced that renewable energy sources supplied more than half of the quarterly energy demand in the National Electricity Market (NEM) for the first time.
In 2018, Justin Kropp was working on a transmission circuit in Southern California when disaster struck. Grid operators had earlier shut down the 115-kilovolt circuit, but six high-voltage lines that shared the corridor were still operating, and some of their power snuck onto the deenergized wires he was working on. That rogue current shot to the ground through Kropp’s body and his elevated work platform, killing the 32-year-old father of two.
“It went in both of his hands and came out his stomach, where he was leaning against the platform rail,” says Justin’s father, Barry Kropp, who is himself a retired line worker. “Justin got hung up on the wire. When they finally got him on the ground, it was too late.”
Budapest-based Electrostatics makes conductive suits that protect line workers from unexpected current. Electrostatics
Justin’s accident was caused by induction: a hazard that occurs when an electric or magnetic field causes current to flow through equipment whose intended power supply has been cut off. Safety practices seek to prevent such induction shocks by grounding all conductive objects in a work zone, giving electricity alternative paths. But accidents happen. In Justin’s case, his platform unexpectedly swung into the line before it could be grounded.
Conductive Suits Protect Line Workers
Adding a layer of defense against induction injuries is the motivation behind Budapest-based Electrostatics’ specialized conductive jumpsuits, which are designed to protect against burns, cardiac fibrillation, and other ills. “If my boy had been wearing one, I know he’d be alive today,” says the elder Kropp, who purchased a line-worker safety training business after Justin’s death. The Mesa, Ariz.–based company, Electrical Safety Consulting International (ESCI), now distributes those suits.
Conductive socks that are connected to the trousers complete the protective suit. BME HVL
Eduardo Ramirez Bettoni, one of the developers of the suits, dug into induction risk after a series of major accidents in the United States in 2017 and 2018, including Justin Kropp’s. At the time, he was principal engineer for transmission and substation standards at Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy. In talking to Xcel line workers and fellow safety engineers, he sensed that the accident cluster might be the tip of an iceberg. And when he and two industry colleagues scoured data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, they found 81 induction accidents between 1985 and 2021 and 60 deaths, which they documented in a 2022 report.
“Unfortunately, it is really common. I would say there are hundreds of induction contacts every year in the United States alone,” says Ramirez Bettoni, who is now technical director of R&D for the Houston-based power-distribution equipment firm Powell Industries. He bets that such “contacts”—exposures to dangerous levels of induction—are increasing as grid operators boost grid capacity by squeezing additional circuits into transmission corridors.
Electrostatics’ suits are an enhancement of the standard protective gear that line workers wear when their tasks involve working close to or even touching energized live lines, or “bare-hands” work. Both are interwoven with conductive materials such as stainless steel threads, which form a Faraday cage that shields the wearer against the lines’ electric fields. But the standard suits have limited capacity to shunt current because usually they don’t need to. Like a bird on a wire, bare-hands workers are electrically floating, rather than grounded, so current largely bypasses them via the line itself.
Induction Safety Suit Design
Backed by a US $250,000 investment from Xcel in 2019, Electrostatics adapted its standard suits by adding low-resistance conductive straps that pass current around a worker’s body. “When I’m touching a conductor with one hand and the other hand is grounded, the current will flow through the straps to get out,” says Bálint Németh, Electrostatics’ CEO and director of the High Voltage Laboratory at Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
A strapping system links all the elements of the suit—the jacket, trousers, gloves, and socks—and guides current through a controlled path outside the body. BME HVL
The company began selling the suits in 2023, and they have since been adopted by over a dozen transmission operators in the United States and Europe, as well as other countries including Canada, Indonesia, and Turkey. They cost about $5,200 in the United States.
Electrostatics’ suits had to meet a crucial design threshold: keeping body exposure below the 6-milliampere “let-go” threshold, beyond which electrocuted workers become unable to remove themselves from a circuit. “If you lose control of your muscles, you’re going to hold onto the conductor until you pass out or possibly die,” says Ramirez Bettoni.
The gear, which includes the suit, gloves, and socks, protects against 100 amperes for 10 seconds and 50 A for 30 seconds. It also has insulation to protect against heat created by high current and flame retardants to protect against electric arcs.
Kropp, Németh, and Ramirez Bettoni are hoping that developing industry standards for induction safety gear, including ones published in October, will broaden their use. Meanwhile, the recently enacted Justin Kropp Safety Act in California, for which the elder Kropp lobbied, mandates automated defibrillators at power-line work sites.
Across global electricity networks, the shift to renewable energy has fundamentally changed the behavior of power systems. Decades of engineering assumptions, predictable inertia, dispatchable baseload generation, and slow, well-characterized system dynamics, are now eroding as wind and solar become dominant sources of electricity. Grid operators face increasingly steep ramp events, larger frequency excursions, faster transients, and prolonged periods where fossil generation is minimal or absent.
In this environment, battery energy storage systems (BESS) have emerged as essential tools for maintaining stability. They can respond in milliseconds, deliver precise power control, and operate flexibly across a range of services. But unlike conventional generation, batteries are sensitive to operational history, thermal environment, state of charge window, system architecture, and degradation mechanisms. Their long-term behavior cannot be described by a single model or simple efficiency curve, it is the product of complex electrochemical, thermal, and control interactions.
Most laboratory tests and simulations attempt to capture these effects, but they rarely reproduce the operational irregularities of the grid. Batteries in real markets are exposed to rapid fluctuations in power demand, partial state of charge cycling, fast recovery intervals, high-rate events, and unpredictable disturbances. As Professor Dan Gladwin, who leads Sheffield’s research into grid-connected energy storage, puts it, “you only understand how storage behaves when you expose it to the conditions it actually sees on the grid.”
This disconnect creates a fundamental challenge for the industry: How can we trust degradation models, lifetime predictions, and operational strategies if they have never been validated against genuine grid behavior?
Few research institutions have access to the infrastructure needed to answer that question. The University of Sheffield is one of them.
Sheffield’s Centre for Research into Electrical Energy Storage and Applications (CREESA) operates one of the UK’s only research-led, grid-connected, multi-megawatt battery energy storage testbeds. The University of Sheffield
Sheffield’s unique facility
The Centre for Research into Electrical Energy Storage and Applications (CREESA) operates one of the UK’s only research-led, grid-connected, multi-megawatt battery energy storage testbeds. This environment enables researchers to test storage technologies not just in simulation or controlled cycling rigs, but under full-scale, live grid conditions. As Professor Gladwin notes, “we aim to bridge the gap between controlled laboratory research and the demands of real grid operation.”
At the heart of the facility is an 11 kV, 4 MW network connection that provides the electrical and operational realism required for advanced diagnostics, fault studies, control algorithm development, techno-economic analysis, and lifetime modeling. Unlike microgrid scale demonstrators or isolated laboratory benches, Sheffield’s environment allows energy storage assets to interact with the same disturbances, market signals, and grid dynamics they would experience in commercial deployment.
“The ability to test at scale, under real operational conditions, is what gives us insights that simulation alone cannot provide.” —Professor Dan Gladwin, The University of Sheffield
The facility includes:
A 2 MW / 1 MWh lithium titanate system, among the first independent grid-connected BESS of its kind in the UK
A 100 kW second-life EV battery platform, enabling research into reuse, repurposing, and circular-economy models
Support for flywheel systems, supercapacitors, hybrid architectures, and fuel-cell technologies
More than 150 laboratory cell-testing channels, environmental chambers, and impedance spectroscopy equipment
High-speed data acquisition and integrated control systems for parameter estimation, thermal analysis, and fault response measurement
The infrastructure allows Sheffield to operate storage assets directly on the live grid, where they respond to real market signals, deliver contracted power services, and experience genuine frequency deviations, voltage events, and operational disturbances. When controlled experiments are required, the same platform can replay historical grid and market signals, enabling repeatable full power testing under conditions that faithfully reflect commercial operation. This combination provides empirical data of a quality and realism rarely available outside utility-scale deployments, allowing researchers to analyse system behavior at millisecond timescales and gather data at a granularity rarely achievable in conventional laboratory environments.
According to Professor Gladwin, “the ability to test at scale, under real operational conditions, is what gives us insights that simulation alone cannot provide.”
Dan Gladwin, Professor of Electrical and Control Systems Engineering, leads Sheffield’s research into grid-connected energy storage.The University of Sheffield
Setting the benchmark with grid scale demonstration
One of Sheffield’s earliest breakthroughs came with the installation of a 2 MW / 1 MWh lithium titanate demonstrator, a first-of-a-kind system installed at a time when the UK had no established standards for BESS connection, safety, or control. Professor Gladwin led the engineering, design, installation, and commissioning of the system, establishing one of the country’s first independent megawatt scale storage platforms.
The project provided deep insight into how high-power battery chemistries behave under grid stressors. Researchers observed sub-second response times and measured the system’s capability to deliver synthetic inertia-like behavior. As Gladwin reflects, “that project showed us just how fast and capable storage could be when properly integrated into the grid.”
But the demonstrator’s long-term value has been its continued operation. Over nearly a decade of research, it has served as a platform for:
Hybridization studies, including battery-flywheel control architectures
Response time optimization for new grid services
Operator training and market integration, exposing control rooms and traders to a live asset
Algorithm development, including dispatch controllers, forecasting tools, and prognostic and health management systems
Comparative benchmarking, such as evaluation of different lithium-ion chemistries, lead-acid systems, and second-life batteries
A recurring finding is that behavior observed on the live grid often differs significantly from what laboratory tests predict. Subtle electrical, thermal, and balance-of-plant interactions that barely register in controlled experiments can become important at megawatt-scale, especially when systems are exposed to rapid cycling, fluctuating set-points, or tightly coupled control actions. Variations in efficiency, cooling system response, and auxiliary power demand can also amplify these effects under real operating stress. As Professor Gladwin notes, “phenomena that never appear in a lab can dominate behavior at megawatt scale.”
These real-world insights feed directly into improved system design. By understanding how efficiency losses, thermal behavior, auxiliary systems, and control interactions emerge at scale, researchers can refine both the assumptions and architecture of future deployments. This closes the loop between application and design, ensuring that new storage systems can be engineered for the operational conditions they will genuinely encounter rather than idealized laboratory expectations.
Ensuring longevity with advanced diagnostics
Sheffield’s Centre for Research into Electrical Energy Storage and Applications (CREESA) enables researchers to test storage technologies not just in simulation or controlled cycling rigs, but under full-scale, live grid conditions.The University of Sheffield
Ensuring the long-term reliability of storage requires understanding how systems age under the conditions they actually face. Sheffield’s research combines high-resolution laboratory testing with empirical data from full-scale grid-connected assets, building a comprehensive approach to diagnostics and prognostics. In Gladwin’s words, “A model is only as good as the data and conditions that shape it. To predict lifetime with confidence, we need laboratory measurements, full-scale testing, and validation under real-world operating conditions working together.”
A major focus is accurate state estimation during highly dynamic operation. Using advanced observers, Kalman filtering, and hybrid physics-ML approaches, the team has developed methods that deliver reliable SOC, SOH and SOP estimates during rapid power swings, irregular cycling, and noisy conditions where traditional methods break down.
Another key contribution is understanding cell-to-cell divergence in large strings. Sheffield’s data shows how imbalance accelerates near SOC extremes, how thermal gradients drive uneven ageing, and how current distribution causes long-term drift. These insights inform balancing strategies that improve usable capacity and safety.
Sheffield has also strengthened lifetime and degradation modeling by incorporating real grid behavior directly into the framework. By analyzing actual market signals, frequency deviations, and dispatch patterns, the team uncovers ageing mechanisms that do not appear during controlled laboratory cycling and would otherwise remain hidden.
These contributions fall into four core areas:
State Estimation and Parameter Identification
Robust SOC/SOH estimation
Online parameter identification for equivalent circuit models
Power capability prediction using transient excitation
Data selection strategies under noise and variability
Degradation and Lifetime Modelling
Degradation models built on real frequency and market data
Analysis of micro cycling and asymmetric duty cycles
Hybrid physics-ML forecasting models
Thermal and Imbalance Behavior
Characterizing thermal gradients in containerized systems
Understanding cell imbalance in large-scale systems
Mitigation strategies at the cell and module level
Coupled thermal-electrical behavior under fast cycling
Hybrid Systems and Multi-Technology Optimization
Battery-flywheel coordination strategies
Techno-economic modeling for hybrid assets
Dispatch optimization using evolutionary algorithms
Control schemes that extend lifetime and enhance service performance
Beyond grid-connected systems, Sheffield’s diagnostic methods have also proved valuable in off-grid environments. A key example is the collaboration with MOPO, a company deploying pay-per-swap lithium-ion battery packs in low-income communities across Sub-Saharan Africa. These batteries face deep cycling, variable user behavior, and sustained high temperatures, all without active cooling or controlled environments. The team’s techniques in cell characterization, parameter estimation, and in-situ health tracking have helped extend the usable life of MOPO’s battery packs. “By applying our know-how, we can make these battery-swap packs clean, safe, and significantly more affordable than petrol and diesel generators for the communities that rely on them,” says Professor Gladwin.
Beyond grid-connected systems, Sheffield’s diagnostic methods have also proved valuable in off-grid environments. A key example is the collaboration with MOPO, a company deploying pay-per-swap lithium-ion battery packs in low-income communities across Sub-Saharan Africa. MOPO
Collaboration and the global future
A defining strength of Sheffield’s approach is its close integration with industry, system operators, technology developers, and service providers. Over the past decade, its grid-connected testbed has enabled organizations to trial control algorithms, commission their first battery assets, test market participation strategies, and validate performance under real operational constraints.
These partnerships have produced practical engineering outcomes, including improved dispatch strategies, refined control architectures, validated installation and commissioning methods, and a clearer understanding of degradation under real-world market operation. According to Gladwin, “It is a two-way relationship, we bring the analytical and research tools, industry brings the operational context and scale.”
One of Sheffield’s earliest breakthroughs came with the installation of a 2 MW / 1 MWh lithium titanate demonstrator. Professor Gladwin led the engineering, design, installation, and commissioning of the system, establishing one of UK’s first independent megawatt scale storage platforms.The University of Sheffield
This two-way exchange, combining academic insight with operational experience, ensures that Sheffield’s research remains directly relevant to modern power systems. It continues to shape best practice in lifetime modelling, hybrid system control, diagnostics, and operational optimization.
As electricity systems worldwide move toward net zero, the need for validated models, proven control algorithms, and empirical understanding will only grow. Sheffield’s combination of full-scale infrastructure, long-term datasets, and collaborative research culture ensures it will remain at the forefront of developing storage technologies that perform reliably in the environments that matter most, the real world.
The power surging through transmission lines over the iconic stone walls of England’s northern countryside is pushing the United Kingdom’s grid to its limits. To the north, Scottish wind farms have doubled their output over the past decade. In the south, where electricity demand is heaviest, electrification and new data centers promise to draw more power, but new generation is falling short. Construction on a new 3,280-megawatt nuclear power plant west of London lags years behind schedule.
The result is a lopsided flow of power that’s maxing out transmission corridors from the Highlands to London. That grid strain won’t ease any time soon. New lines linking Scotland to southern England are at least three to four years from operation, and at risk of further delays from fierce local opposition.
At the same time, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is bent on installing even more wind power and slashing fossil-fuel generation by 2030. His Labour government says low-carbon power is cheaper and more secure than natural gas, much of which comes from Norway via the world’s longest underwater gas pipeline and is vulnerable to disruption and sabotage.
The lack of transmission lines available to move power flowing south from Scottish wind farms has caused grid congestion in England. To better manage it, the U.K. has installed SmartValves at three substations in northern England—Penwortham, Harker, and Saltholme—and is constructing a fourth at South Shields. Chris Philpot
The U.K.’s resulting grid congestion prevents transmission operators from delivering some of their cleanest, cheapest generation to all of the consumers who want it. Congestion is a perennial problem whenever power consumption is on the rise. It pushes circuits to their thermal limits and creates grid stability or security constraints.
With congestion relief needed now, the U.K.’s grid operators are getting creative, rapidly tapping new cable designs and innovations in power electronics to squeeze more power through existing transmission corridors. These grid-enhancing technologies, or GETs, present a low-cost way to bridge the gap until new lines can be built.
“GETs allow us to operate the system harder before an investment arrives, and they save a s***load of money,” says Julian Leslie, chief engineer and director of strategic energy planning at the National Energy System Operator (NESO), the Warwick-based agency that directs U.K. energy markets and infrastructure.
Transmission lines running across England’s countryside are maxed out, creating bottlenecks in the grid that prevent some carbon-free power from reaching customers. Vincent Lowe/Alamy
The U.K.’s extreme grid challenge has made it ground zero for some of the boldest GETs testing and deployment. Such innovation involves some risk, because an intervention anywhere on the U.K.’s tightly meshed power system can have system-wide impacts. (Grid operators elsewhere are choosing to start with GETs at their systems’ periphery—where there’s less impact if something goes wrong.)
The question is how far—and how fast—the U.K.’s grid operators can push GETs capabilities. The new technologies still have a limited track record, so operators are cautiously feeling their way toward heavier investment. Power system experts also have unanswered questions about these advanced grid capabilities. For example, will they create more complexity than grid operators can manage in real time? Might feedback between different devices destabilize the grid?
There is no consensus yet as to how to even screen for such risks, let alone protect against them, says Robin Preece, professor in future power systems at the University of Manchester, in England. “We’re at the start of establishing that now, but we’re building at the same time. So it’s kind of this race between the necessity to get this technology installed as quickly as possible, and our ability to fully understand what’s happening.”
How is the U.K. Managing Grid Congestion?
One of the most innovative and high-stakes tricks in the U.K.’s toolbox employs electronic power-flow controllers, devices that shift electricity from jammed circuits to those with spare capacity. These devices have been able to finesse enough additional wind power through grid bottlenecks to replace an entire gas-fired generator. Installed in northern England four years ago by Smart Wires, based in Durham, N.C., these SmartValves are expected to help even more as NESO installs more of them and masters their capabilities.
Warwick-based National Grid Electricity Transmission, the grid operator for England and Wales, is adding SmartValves and also replacing several thousand kilometers of overhead wire with advanced conductors that can carry more current. And it’s using a technique called dynamic line rating, whereby sensors and models work together to predict when weather conditions will allow lines to carry extra current.
Other kinds of GETs are also being used globally. Advanced conductors are the most widely deployed. Dynamic line rating is increasingly common in European countries, and U.S. utilities are beginning to take it seriously. Europe also leads the world in topology-optimization software, which reconfigures power routes to alleviate congestion, and advanced power-flow-control devices like SmartValves.
Engineers install dynamic line rating technology from the Boston-based company LineVision on National Grid’s transmission network. National Grid Electricity Transmission
SmartValves’ chops stand out at the Penwortham substation in Lancashire, England, one of two National Grid sites where the device made its U.K. debut in 2021. Penwortham substation is a major transmission hub, whose spokes desperately need congestion relief. Auditory evidence of heavy power flows was clear during my visit to the substation, which buzzes loudly. The sound is due to the electromechanical stresses on the substation’s massive transformers, explains my guide, National Grid commissioned engineer Paul Lloyd.
Penwortham’s transformers, circuits, and protective relays are spread over 15 hectares, sandwiched between pastureland and suburban homes near Preston, a small city north of Manchester. Power arrives from the north on two pairs of 400-kilovolt AC lines, and most of it exits southward via 400-kV and 275-kV double-circuit wires.
Transmission lines lead to the congested Penwortham substation, which has become a test-bed for GETs such as SmartValves and dynamic line rating. Peter Fairley
What makes the substation a strategic test-bed for GETs is its position just north of the U.K. grid’s biggest bottleneck, known as Boundary B7a, which runs east to west across the island. Nine circuits traverse the B7a: the four AC lines headed south from Penwortham, four AC lines closer to Yorkshire’s North Sea coast, and a high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) link offshore. In theory, those circuits can collectively carry 13.6 gigawatts across the B7a. But NESO caps its flow at several gigawatts lower to ensure that no circuits overload if any two lines turn off.
Such limits are necessary for grid reliability, but they are leaving terawatt-hours of wind power stranded in Scotland and increasing consumers’ energy costs: an extra £196 million (US $265 million) in 2024 alone. The costs stem from NESO having to ramp up gas-fired generators to meet demand down south while simultaneously compensating wind-farm operators for curtailing their output, as required under U.K. policy.
So National Grid keeps tweaking Penwortham. In 2011 the substation got its first big GET: phase-shifting transformers (PSTs), a type of analog flow controller. PSTs adjust power flow by creating an AC waveform whose alternating voltage leads or lags its alternating current. They do so by each PST using a pair of connected transformers to selectively combine power from an AC transmission circuit’s three phases. Motors reposition electrical connections on the transformer coils to adjust flows.
Phase-shifting transformers (PSTs) were installed in 2012 at the Penwortham substation and are the analog predecessor to SmartValves. They’re powerful but also bulky and relatively inflexible. It can take 10 minutes or more for the PST’s motorized actuators at Penwortham to tap their full range of flow control, whereas SmartValves can shift within milliseconds.National Grid Electricity Transmission
Penwortham’s pair of 540-tonne PSTs occupy the entire south end of the substation, along with their dedicated chillers, relays, and power supplies. Delivering all that hardware required extensive road closures and floating a huge barge up the adjacent River Ribble, an event that made national news.
The SmartValves at Penwortham stand in stark contrast to the PSTs’ heft, complexity, and mechanics. SmartValves are a type of static synchronous series compensator, or SSSC—a solid-state alternative to PSTs that employs power electronics to tweak power flows in milliseconds. I saw two sets of them tucked into a corner of the substation, occupying a quarter of the area of the PSTs.
The SmartValve V103 design [above] experienced some teething and reliability issues that were ironed out with the technology’s next iteration, the V104. National Grid Electricity Transmission/Smart Wires
The SmartValves are first and foremost an insurance policy to guard against a potentially crippling event: the sudden loss of one of the B7a’s 400-kV lines. If that were to happen, gigawatts of power would instantly seek another route over neighboring lines. And if it happened on a windy day, when lots of power is streaming in from the north, the resulting surge could overload the 275-kV circuits headed from Penwortham to Liverpool. The SmartValves’ job is to save the day.
They do this by adding impedance to the 275-kV lines, thus acting to divert more power to the remaining 400-kV lines. This rerouting of power prevents a blackout that could potentially cascade through the grid. The upside to that protection is that NESO can safely schedule an additional 350 MW over the B7a.
The savings add up. “That’s 350 MW of wind you’re no longer curtailing from wind farms. So that’s 350 times £100 a megawatt-hour,” says Leslie, at NESO. “That’s also 350 MW of gas-fired power that you don’t need to replace the wind. So that’s 350 times £120 a megawatt-hour. The numbers get big quickly.”
Mark Osborne, the National Grid lead asset life-cycle engineer managing its SmartValve projects, estimates the devices are saving U.K. customers over £100 million (US $132 million) a year. At that rate, they’ll pay for themselves “within a few years,” Osborne says. By utility standards, where investments are normally amortized over decades, that’s “almost immediately,” he adds.
How Do Grid-Enhancing Technologies Work?
The way Smart Wires’ SSSC devices adjust power flow is based on emulating impedance, which is a strange beast created by AC power. An AC flow’s changing magnetic field induces an additional voltage in the line’s conductor, which then acts as a drag on the initial field. Smart Wires’ SSSC devices alter power flow by emulating that natural process, effectively adding or subtracting impedance by adding their own voltage wave to the line. Adding a wave that leads the original voltage wave will boost flow, while adding a lagging wave will reduce flow.
The SSSC’s submodules of capacitors and high-speed insulated-gate bipolar transistors operate in sequence to absorb power from a line and synthesize its novel impedance-altering waves. And thanks to its digital controls and switches, the device can within milliseconds flip from maximum power push to maximum pull.
You can trace the development of SSSCs to the advent of HVDC transmission in the 1950s. HVDC converters take power from an AC grid and efficiently convert it and transfer it over a DC line to another point in the same grid, or to a neighboring AC grid. In 1985, Narain Hingorani, an HVDC expert at the Palo Alto–based Electric Power Research Institute, showed that similar converters could modulate the flow of an AC line. Four years later, Westinghouse engineer Laszlo Gyugyi proposed SSSCs, which became the basis for Smart Wires’ boxes.
Major power-equipment manufacturers tried to commercialize SSSCs in the early 2000s. But utilities had little need for flow control back then because they had plenty of conventional power plants that could meet local demand when transmission lines were full.
The picture changed as solar and wind generation exploded and conventional plants began shutting down. In years past, grid operators addressed grid congestion by turning power plants on or off in strategic locations. But as of 2024, the U.K. had shut down all of its coal-fired power plants—save one, which now burns wood—and it has vowed to slash gas-fired generation from about a quarter of electricity supply in 2024 to at most 5 percent in 2030.
The U.K.’s extreme grid challenge has made it ground zero for some of the boldest GETs testing and deployment.
To seize the emerging market opportunity presented by changing grid operations, Smart Wires had to make a crucial technology upgrade: ditching transformers. The company’s first SSSC, and those from other suppliers, relied on a transformer to absorb lightning, voltage surges, and every other grid assault that could fry their power electronics. This made them bulky and added cost. So Smart Wires engineers set to work in 2017 to see if they could live without the transformer, says Frank Kreikebaum, Smart Wires’s interim chief of engineering. Two years later the company had assembled a transformerless electronic shield. It consisted of a suite of filters and diverters, along with a control system to activate them. Ditching the transformer produced a trim, standardized product—a modular system-in-a-box.
SmartValves work at any voltage and are generally ganged together to achieve a desired level of flow control. They can be delivered fast, and they fit in the kinds of tight spaces that are common in substations. “It’s not about cost, even though we’re competitive there. It’s about ‘how quick’ and ‘can it fit,’” says Kreikebaum.
And if the grid’s pinch point shifts? The devices can be quickly moved to another substation. “It’s a Lego-brick build,” says Owen Wilkes, National Grid’s director of network design. Wilkes’s team decides where to add equipment based on today’s best projections, but he appreciates the flexibility to respond to unexpected changes.
National Grid’s deployments in 2021 were the highest-voltage installation of SSSCs at the time, and success there is fueling expansion. National Grid now has packs of SmartValves installed at three substations in northern England and under construction at another, with five more installations planned in that area. Smart Wires has also commissioned commercial projects at transmission substations in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, and the United States.
Dynamic Line Rating Boosts Grid Efficiency
In addition to SSSCs, National Grid has deployed lidar that senses sag on Penwortham’s 275-kV lines—an indication that they’re starting to overheat. The sensors are part of a dynamic line rating system and help grid operators maximize the amount of current that high-voltage lines can carry based on near-real-time weather conditions. (Cooler weather means more capacity.) Now the same technology is being deployed across the B7a—a £1 million investment that is projected to save consumers £33 million annually, says Corin Ireland, a National Grid optimization engineer with the task of seizing GETs opportunities.
There’s also a lot of old conductor wires being swapped out for those that can carry more power. National Grid’s business plan calls for 2,416 kilometers of such reconductoring over the coming five years, which is about 20 percent of its system. Scotland’s transmission operators are busy with their own big swaps.
Scottish wind farms have doubled their power output over the past decade, but it often gets stranded due to grid congestion in England. Andreas Berthold/Alamy
But while National Grid and NESO are making some of the boldest deployments of GETs in the world, they’re not fully tapping the technologies’ capabilities. That’s partly due to the conservative nature of power utilities, and partly because grid operators already have plenty to keep their eyes on. It also stems from the unknowns that still surround GETs, like whether they might take the grid in unforeseen directions if allowed to respond automatically, or get stuck in a feedback loop responding to each other. Imagine SmartValve controllers at different substations fighting, with one substation jumping to remove impedance that the other just added, causing fluctuating power flows.
“These technologies operate very quickly, but the computers in the control room are still very reliant on people making decisions,” says Ireland. “So there are time scales that we have to take into consideration when planning and operating the network.”
This kind of conservative dispatching leaves value on the table. For example, the dynamic line rating models can spit out new line ratings every 15 minutes, but grid operators get updates only every 24 hours. Fewer updates means fewer opportunities to tap the system’s ability to boost capacity. Similarly, for SmartValves, NESO activates installations at only one substation at a time. And control-room operators turn them on manually, even though the devices could automatically respond to faults within milliseconds.
National Grid is upgrading transmission lines dating as far back as the 1960s. This includes installing conductors that retain their strength at higher temperatures, allowing them to carry more power. National Grid Electricity Transmission
Modeling by Smart Wires and National Grid shows a significant capacity boost across Boundary B7a if Penwortham’s SmartValves were to work in tandem with another set further up the line. For example, when Penwortham is adding impedance to push megawatts off the 275-kV lines, a set closer to Scotland could simultaneously pull the power north, nudging the sum over to the B7a’s eastern circuits. Simulations by Andy Hiorns, a former National Grid planning director who consults for Smart Wires, suggest that this kind of cooperative action should increase the B7a circuits’ usable capacity by another 250 to 300 MW. “You double the effectiveness by using them as pairs,” he says.
Operating multiple flow controllers may become necessary for unlocking the next boundary en route to London, south of the B7a, called Boundary B8. As dynamic line rating, beefier conductors, and SmartValves send more power across the B7a, lines traversing B8 are reaching their limits. Eventually, every boundary along the route will have to be upgraded.
Meanwhile, back at its U.S. headquarters, Smart Wires is developing other applications for its SSSCs, such as filtering out power oscillations that can destabilize grids and reduce allowable transfers. That capability could be unlocked remotely with firmware.
The company is also working on a test program that could turn on pairs of SmartValve installations during slack moments when there isn’t much going on in the control rooms. That would give National Grid and NESO operators an opportunity to observe the impacts, and to get more comfortable with the technology.
National Grid and Smart Wires are also hard at work developing industry-first optimization software for coordinating flow-control devices. “It’s possible to extend the technology from how we’re using it today,” says Ireland at National Grid. “That’s the exciting bit.”
NESO’s Julian Leslie shares that excitement and says he expects SmartValves to begin working together to ease power through the grid—once the operators have the modeling right and get a little more comfortable with the technology. “It’s a great innovation that has the potential to be really transformational,” he says. “We’re just not quite there yet.”
This article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “The Low-Cost Electronics Unclogging the U.K.’s Grid.”
A prototyping problem is emerging in today’s efforts to electrify everything. What works as a lab-bench mockup breaks in reality. Harnessing and safely storing energy at grid scale and in cars, trucks, and planes is a very hard problem that simplified models sometimes can’t touch.
“In electrification, at its core, you have this combination of electromagnetic effects, heat transfer, and structural mechanics in a complicated interplay,” says Bjorn Sjodin, senior vice president of product management at the Stockholm-based software company COMSOL.
COMSOL is an engineering R&D software company that seeks to simulate not just a single phenomenon—for instance, the electromagnetic behavior of a circuit—but rather all the pertinent physics that needs to be simulated for developing new technologies in real-world operating conditions.
Engineers and developers gathered in Burlington, Mass. on 8 to 10 October for COMSOL’s annual Boston conference, where they discussed engineering simulations via multiple simultaneous physics packages. And multiphysics modeling, as the emerging field is called, has emerged as a component of electrification R&D that is becoming more than just nice to have.
“Sometimes, I think some people still see simulation as a fancy R&D thing,” says Niloofar Kamyab, a chemical engineer and applications manager at COMSOL. “Because they see it as a replacement for experiments. But no, experiments still need to be done, though experiments can be done in a more optimized and effective way.”
Can Multiphysics Scale Electrification?
Multiphysics, Kamyab says, can sometimes be only half the game.
“I think when it comes to batteries, there is another attraction when it comes to simulation,” she says. “It’s multiscale—how batteries can be studied across different scales. You can get in-depth analysis that, if not very hard, I would say is impossible to do experimentally.”
In part, this is because batteries reveal complicated behaviors (and runaway reactions) at the cell level but also in unpredictable new ways at the battery-pack level as well.
“Most of the people who do simulations of battery packs—thermal management is one of their primary concerns,” Kamyab says. “You do this simulation so you know how to avoid it. You recreate a cell that is malfunctioning.” She adds that multiphysics simulation of thermal runaway enables battery engineers to safely test how each design behaves in even the most extreme conditions—in order to stop any battery problems or fires before they could happen.
Wireless charging systems are another area of electrification, with their own thermal challenges. “At higher power levels, localized heating of the coil changes its conductivity,” says Nirmal Paudel, a lead engineer at Veryst Engineering, a consulting firm based in Needham, Mass. And that, he notes, in turn can change the entire circuit as well as the design and performance of all the elements that surround it.
Electric motors and power converters require similar simulation savvy. According to electrical engineer and COMSOL senior application engineer Vignesh Gurusamy, older ways of developing these age-old electrical workhorse technologies are proving less useful today. “The recent surge in electrification across diverse applications demands a more holistic approach as it enables the development of new optimal designs,” Gurusamy says.
And freight transportation: “For trucks, people are investigating, Should we use batteries? Should we use fuel cells?” Sjodin says. “Fuel cells are very multiphysics friendly—fluid flow, heat transfer, chemical reactions, and electrochemical reactions.”
Lastly, there’s the electric grid itself. “The grid is designed for a continuous supply of power,” Sjodin says. “So when you have power sources [like wind and solar] shutting off and on all the time, you have completely new problems.”
Multiphysics in Battery and Electric-Motor Design
Taking such an all-in approach to engineering simulations can yield unanticipated upsides as well, says Kamyab. Berlin-based automotive engineering company IAV, for example, is developing power-train systems that integrate multiple battery formats and chemistries in a single pack. “Sodium ion cannot give you the energy that lithium ion can give,” Kamyab says. “So they came up with a blend of chemistries, to get the benefits of each, and then designed a thermal management that matches all the chemistries.”
Jakob Hilgert, who works as a technical consultant at IAV, recently contributed to a COMSOL industry case study. In it, Hilgert described the design of a dual-chemistry battery pack that combines sodium-ion cells with a more costly lithium solid-state battery.
Hilgert says that using multiphysics simulation enabled the IAV team to play the two chemistries’ different properties off of each other. “If we have some cells that can operate at high temperatures and some cells that can operate at low temperatures, it is beneficial to take the exhaust heat of the higher-running cells to heat up the lower-running cells, and vice versa,” Hilgert said. “That’s why we came up with a cooling system that shifts the energy from cells that want to be in a cooler state to cells that want to be in a hotter state.”
According to Sjodin, IAV is part of a larger trend in a range of industries that are impacted by the electrification of everything. “Algorithmic improvements and hardware improvements multiply together,” he says. “That’s the future of multiphysics simulation. It will allow you to simulate larger and larger, more realistic systems.”
According to COMSOL’s Gurusamy, GPU accelerators and surrogate models allow for bigger jumps in electric-motor capabilities and efficiencies. Even seemingly simple components like the windings of copper wire in a motor core (called stators) provide parameters that multiphysics can optimize.
“A primary frontier in electric-motor development is pushing power density and efficiency to new heights, with thermal management emerging as a key challenge,” Gurusamy says. “Multiphysics models that couple electromagnetic and thermal simulations…incorporate temperature-dependent behavior in stator windings and magnetic materials.”
Simulation is also changing the wireless charging world, Paudel says. “Traditional design cycles tweak coil geometry,” he says. “Today, integrated multiphysics platforms enable exploration of new charging architectures,” including flexible charging textiles and smart surfaces that adapt in real time.
And batteries, according to Kamyab, are continuing a push toward higher power densities and lower prices. Which is changing not just the industries where batteries are already used, like consumer electronics and EVs. Higher-capacity batteries are also driving new industries like electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs).
“The reason that many ideas that we had 30 years ago are becoming a reality is now we have the batteries to power them,” Kamyab says. “That was the bottleneck for many years.... And as we continue to push battery technology forward, who knows what new technologies and applications we’re making possible next.”
Having spent most of my career at the nexus of power generation and industrial infrastructure, I can safely say that few things have stressed the American electric grid quite like the explosive growth in AI-driven data centers. At Industrial Info Resources, we are currently tracking more than $2.7 trillion in data center projects worldwide, including more than $1 trillion in new US investment in just nine short months.
It is not only technology that faces a skyrocketing demand; it’s about electricity. With its voracious power appetite, artificial intelligence is making plain just how unprepared the aging US power grid is for the next major step in technological evolution.
AI’s Appetite for Power
The amount of computational power AI requires is astonishing. More than 700 million new users have gone online in the past year alone, and according to estimates by OpenAI, global compute demand could soon require a gigawatt of new capacity every week. That is roughly one big power station every seven days.
We are already seeing the ramifications in our project data at IIR Energy. A large number of the biggest hyperscale projects are reaching major capacity bottlenecks: utilities in some areas are telling data center operators they won’t be able to provide additional megawatts until as late as 2032. A few years ago, that kind of delay was unthinkable.
Limits like these are forcing developers to think out of the box when considering data center construction locations. No longer are they concentrating on central metro areas, but they are gravitating towards areas around transmission interconnections, wind or solar parks, or even existing industrial areas that are already served by substations.
The New York Independent System Operator’s Comprehensive Reliability Plan, or CRP, predicts impending power shortages across the state. It identifies three key challenges that are occurring at once: an older generation fleet, fast-rising loads from data centers and chip plants, and new hurdles to building supply. It’s a confluence of threats that are straining reliability planning to its limits.
An Outdated Grid Meets a $40 Trillion Market
With electricity demand having been stagnant for the past few years, improvements to the country’s collective power grid have not been prioritized. This recent rebound in load is meeting a grid that’s already congestion-prone and aging. Some regions face record-breaking congestion pricing and curtailment. Last week, PJM (the largest regional electricity transmission organization in the United States) saw wholesale capacity auction power prices jump roughly 800%.
This serves as a powerful reminder that while the digital economy proceeds at light speed, physical infrastructure doesn’t. Transmission upgrades require years to approve and construct, and generation projects may be held back by supply chains or local policy barriers. AI’s future, as grand as it is, now hinges on how fast we will upgrade physical systems that enable it.
Behind the Meter: The New Energy Strategy
Confronted with delayed delivery schedules and lengthy interconnection queues, data center builders are taking control themselves. Increasingly, they are making investments in “behind-the-meter” options to guarantee access to the power they require. They are considering natural gas turbines, high-end fuel cells, as well as extended renewable contracts that come with a direct path to generation independent of having to wait for upgrades from utilities. Technologies for liquid cooling are helping data center operators decrease freshwater consumption as they improve efficiency.
Data centers are no longer simple consumers of power. Increasingly, they are becoming power collaborators, in some instances, power generators. Utilities are adapting by teaming with developers to co-develop generation assets or reassessing baseload integrity. Next-generation designs are on track to reach a megawatt or more per rack by 2029.
Why Reliable Intelligence Matters
In a market changing this rapidly, it’s crucial to have reliable information. And that’s where IIR Energy offers a distinct edge. We follow projects from initial planning to evaluation and refinement, tracking every milestone and closely watching the power fundamentals that influence success.
This transparency allows utilities, investors, and developers to discern actual development from rumors. For example, whereas some reports indicate that big builds for data centers are decreasing, our intelligence indicates just the opposite. The buildout continues to accelerate and spread, transitioning to different areas and different forms of power delivery.
Reliable, corroborated information allows decision-makers to know exactly where expansion is occurring as well as the limitations that will hinder it. This is the basis of business at IIR Energy. We offer insight capable of piercing the din to predict how AI, energy, and infrastructure will continue to develop side by side by side.
All in all, this goes to remind us of a simple yet powerful reality: the AI power race will not just be about smarter algorithms. We’ll need smarter infrastructure to match.
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About the Author
Britt Burt is the Vice President of Power Industry Research at IIR Energy, bringing nearly 40 years of expertise across the power, energy, and data center sectors. He leads IIR’s power research team, overseeing the identification and verification of data on operational and proposed power plants worldwide. Known for his deep industry insight, Britt plays a key role in keeping global energy intelligence accurate and up to date.
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