About this event:
Join us at the Digitalisation & Data Science – Enablers for Net Zero Conference on Friday, 6th December 2024, at Imperial College London, hosted by CIGRE UK Study Committee D2. This one-day event will bring together leading experts, innovators, and key stakeholders from the energy and digital technology sectors to explore how digitalisation and data science are unlocking new opportunities in the drive towards achieving net zero.
With the urgent need to decarbonise and modernise energy systems, the power sector is experiencing a rapid transformation. The integration of digital tools, advanced information systems, telecommunications, and robust data management practices is critical for the efficient operation, control, and management of electrical power systems. Cybersecurity has also become a central concern, ensuring that these digital infrastructures are resilient and protected against growing threats. At this conference, we will delve into the latest innovations and initiatives that are shaping the future of energy.
Our aim is to highlight pioneering projects and technologies that demonstrate how digital solutions can propel the energy transition forward, improving the reliability, efficiency, and sustainability of power systems. Through a series of expert presentations, engaging panel discussions, and valuable networking opportunities, attendees will gain crucial insights into how digitalisation and data science are enabling the energy sector to meet ambitious carbon reduction targets and beyond. Whether you work in energy systems, telecommunications, cybersecurity, or data science, this event is essential for those interested in the future of the energy industry and its vital role in the journey towards net zero.
Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a unique gathering that connects thought leaders, researchers, and professionals working at the intersection of energy and digital innovation. Gain fresh perspectives, share your expertise, and network with peers who are driving the digital transformation of the energy landscape.
Agenda:
09:00 – Arrival Refreshments
09:30 – Welcome / Introduction to D2
09:45 – Working Group D2.57 CIM: The Common information model | Siva Kaviya Trichy Siva Raman, National Energy Systems Operator
10:00 – Cyber-resiliency of digitalised power grids | Fei Teng, Imperial College London
10:20 – Digital Substations – A Summary of UK Power Network’s Project Constellation | Oussama Yousfi, UK Power Networks
10:40 – Cyber Security for Active and Flexible Energy Networks (Cyber-SAFEN) – Haiyu Li, University of Manchester
11:00 – Comfort/Refreshment Break
11:20 – 1st Panel/Q&A
11:40 – Pole Defect Image Detection Model | Emerson Smith, National Grid
12:00 – Enhanced Information and Data Exchange to Enable Future TSO-DSO Coordination and Interoperability | Gareth Taylor, Brunel University London
12:20 – Buffet Networking Lunch (one hour)
13:20 – Session TBA
13:40 – Automated Corrosion Assessment and Forecasting at National Grid | Amjad Karim, Keen AI
14:00 – Digitalisation of transmission substations with an emphasis on protection and automation | Peter Crossley, University of Manchester
14:20 – 2nd Panel/Q&A
14:50 – Wrap up
15:00 – Depart
Event details:
This is an in person event held on the 6th December at Imperial College London. There is a fee to secure your space – CIGRE Member £25, Non Member £50, Student £10
Working Group D2.57 CIM: The Common information model
The Common information model (CIM) described in the international standards IEC 61970, IEC 61968, IEC 62325 helps to facilitate integration between information systems and applications by defining the semantics for this Application Programming Interface (API). The CIM is an abstract model that represents all the major objects in an electric utility.
At the moment, many companies use CIM standards for various areas, including: Operational planning, Long-term planning, Asset Management, Electricity market, Etc.
IEC standards were approved in the 2000s and developed quite conservatively. Despite CIM standards contain flexible models relevant for the most common tasks, some of the tasks need to be expanded. For example, since the 2010s, the AC line model extensions have been discussed, but these extensions have not yet found a place in the IEC standards.
The working group can help in the analysis of existing extensions of the standard model, as well as proposals for their unification or for the creation of new extensions to ensure the possibility of solving more tasks. The extensions proposed by the WG will be free of any patent.
The proposed activity is close to JWG N° D2/C2.48, but mainly focused on CIM extensions and its development.
Siva Kaviya, Trichy Siva Raman, Works as part of the Innovation, Digital, Data & Technology team on interconnected Digital Twin, Virtual Energy System program – NESO.
Working as subject matter expert in the domain of CIM, power system modelling, data exchange interfaces as part of the Data sharing infrastructure (DSI) pilot program of VirtualES.
Responsible for building a common framework including data & industry standards, strategy and policies, best practices guidelines based on socio-economic-technical key factors (People, Process, Data and Technology) for providing interoperability of digital twins for the virtual energy system program.
Previously, she worked as a Power System Software Engineer under the IPSA Software & Solution Team of TNEI, based in Manchester.
In the area of volunteering, she is the CIGRE UK NGN’s Events Team Lead & International Representative, IEEE PES WIP Region 8 social media coordinator, Training & Development lead of WiNTR (Women in Non-Traditional Role).
Siva Kaviya, Trichy Siva Raman, completed her master’s degree (Electrical Engineering) from TU Delft, Netherlands specializing in smart grids.
She has over 3.5 years of working in GB energy industry, followed by six years of Academics Experience in the field of Power Systems and Smart Grids with a good understanding of the European & GB Energy Markets.
She also has significant years of experience developing software tools and scripts in the realms of power system in the domains of data integration, energy integration, analysis modules.
Cyber-resiliency of digitalised power grids
The digitization of the power grid is one of the key components to support a cost-effective transition toward “Net-zero”. However, the increasing cyber-physical dependency causes potential vulnerabilities against cyber-attacks that may lead to catastrophic damages to the power grid. It is hence critical to understand such vulnerabilities and develop capabilities to maintain the safe operation of power grids under those attacks. This talk will introduce a cyber-resiliency framework that includes prevention, detection, mitigation, recovery and the interactions among them. We will then focus on presenting a proactive defence strategy that blends physics and data for attack detection and a “safe-mode” operation strategy for attack mitigation.
Dr Fei Teng is the Director of Education at Energy Futures Lab, a pan-university hub promoting inter- disciplinary research in energy, and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London. He has held visiting positions at MINES ParisTech, PolyU, and KTH. His research primarily focuses on revolutionising the decision-making framework for the NerZero power systems. He has made fundamental contributions to the concept of software-defined power networks (enabled by high penetration of power electronics and advanced computational capability) by developing stability-constrained optimisation, cyber-resilient decision making and privacy-preserving data exchange. He has authored more than 100 scientific publications in leading power system journals and conferences. He is the recipient of the Best Papers Awards from IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, the Early Career Award from IEEE TC on Secure and Dependable Measurement, and the Kan Tong Po International Fellowship from the Royal Society. His research has been funded by EPSRC, ESRC, Innovate UK, Research England, the Royal Society, EDF Energy, Hitachi, and National Grid ESO.
Digital Substations – A Summary of Project Constellation
Project Constellation is a first of its kind project aimed to redefine the way distribution networks have traditionally functioned. By investigating state of the art solutions such as Wide Area Protection (ABB), Local Active Network Management (GE), and Adaptive Protection (Siemens), and 5G communication (Vodafone), Constellation aims to facilitate the net-zero transition of DNOs through reliably releasing more capacity to distributed energy resources enabling them to be safely connected to the network. To ensure that those solutions are secure and fully de-risked, off-network trials have been carried out by the PNDC.
The presentation will share the key drivers behind the need for such a project from a DNO’s perspective and provide additional details on each of the innovative solutions developed. This will be then followed up by a progress update on the project highlighting key achievements to date. The presentation will include some key examples from the testing activities.
To conclude, the project plan will be highlighted with an overview of the key next steps of the project followed by opening the floor to attendees for question.
Additional details about the project can be found on: https://innovation.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/projects/constellation
Oussama Yousfi is a Senior Innovation Project Manager at UK Power Networks leading the delivery of project Constellation. An £18m initiative set out to create the UK’s first smart substation. Oussama comes from a background of Electrical Engineering, with his latest venture being an MSc. in Future Power Networks from Imperial College London. Prior to Constellation, he managed a variety of innovative initiatives from zero- emissions heating to inspecting tunnels with robots.
Before joining UK Power Networks, Oussama worked as an Electrical Designer in the Building Services sector designing state of the art buildings at the heart of London.
Cyber Security for Active and Flexible Energy Networks (Cyber-SAFEN)
Potential malicious cyber-attacks to cyber system in energy network will impose significant societal risks and challenges. The timely detection and defense measures are of crucial importance for safe and reliable operation of cyber-physical energy networks. This presentation introduces Scottish Power Energy Network and National Gird jointly supported Cyber-SAFEN project that aims to build essential cyber safe and resilient functions for electricity networks Production, Automation and control (PAC) and SCADA systems against advanced cyber-attacks, and to accelerate the UK confidently moving to low carbon economy.
One of key attributes of this presentation is to demonstrate how Cyber-SAFEN harnesses advanced ML/AI techniques to build a dual defence system against advanced cyber threats. The scope of the dual cyber defence system is firstly to develop data driven and ML cyber–Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to identify known or unknown cyber-attacks, and then to develop AI based cyber Intrusion Response System (IRS) for both PAC system and SCADA system against malicious control actions, hence to prevent unwanted trips due to cyber-attacks. Finally, the status of the project progress and results will be presented and discussed.
Pole Defect Image Detection Model
National Grid Electricity Distribution has thousands of poles in its licence area. Poles on the HV network must be surveyed for defects every 4 years but at on the EHV network, it is every 2 years and every year on the 132kV network. This results in over 45,000km of overhead network being patrolled per year. Currently, someone in the helicopter to check for defects during flights. However, a machine learning model to identify defects could be used to do this, which would improve workforce resilience and could be more accurate than a person doing this. This model hasn’t been created yet and looks at the possibility of using a machine learning model for this purpose.
I plan that the presentation will cover the following areas:
• An introduction to National Grid Electricity Distribution and what the company does.
• An introduction to image detection and its benefits.
• How the data is currently collected.
• How cloud technologies can be used to improve scalability and aid the model’s development. • The necessary data preparation steps for the model.
• The training and testing stages to train the model.
• The potential challenges and limitations this model may face.
• Other potential use cases for image detection at National Grid Electricity Distribution.
• A conclusion to summarise what has been discussed.
Emerson Smith has worked at National Grid Electricity Distribution for two years as a data science apprentice. As an apprentice, his time is split between studying at Nottingham University and workplace projects. He joined the company straight after completing my A-levels at schools.
Enhanced Information and Data Exchange to Enable Future TSO-DSO Coordination and Interoperability
Future coordinated transmission and distribution operational procedures and planning, as well as real-time tools and modelling approaches need to be modified, revised, updated and integrated using novel ICT techniques that involve whole system information and data management to consider overall system security, flexibility requirements, stability, resiliency and affordability.
Such representations will be constrained by computationally demanding processes, intensive information and data management, data confidentiality and cybersecurity issues at both distribution and transmission system operator levels.
Enhanced Information systems and data exchange will be essential to enable future transmission and distribution system interoperability, interaction and coordination.
Prof Gareth Taylor is the Director of the Brunel Interdisciplinary Power Systems (BIPS) Research Centre and was Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (2019-23) at Brunel University London. He has contributed to over 300 research publications and his current research interests include power system operation, smart grids, renewable energy systems, power system information systems and communications. He was also project coordinator for a 4.2M euro H2020 Energy project (2017-2020/774500) entitled ‘Coordination of Transmission and Distribution data eXchanges for renewables integration in the European marketplace through Advanced, Scalable and Secure ICT Systems and Tools’ TDX-ASSIST. The consortium included Brunel University London, EDF R&D, ENTSO-e, EIMV, Fraunhofer IEE, Nester R&D, OFFIS, INESC, ELES, EG, REN and EDPD. He is an IET Fellow, IEEE Senior Member, Chair of the IEEE PES PSOPE task force on TSO-DSO interaction, and is active in several IEEE Power and Energy Society and CIGRE international working groups and task forces. He was also the elected CIGRE UK Regular Member (2016-22) for Study Committee D2 ‘Information Systems, Telecommunication and Cybersecurity’. He was appointed as a Distinguished Visting Fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University in January 2023. He was also appointed as a Visiting Professor within the Control and Power Research Group, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London from 1st October 2023 to 30th September 2026.
Automated Corrosion Assessment and Forecasting at National Grid
Keen AI and National Grid have developed a custom deep learning pipeline which is able to reliably detect the presence of corrosion of steelwork towers and complete an assessment. This combined with the ability to forecast future state is transforming the way NG are assessing the state of their towers.
This presentation describes the business problem, the technical approach to solving it and some of the hurdles still to overcome.
Amjad Karim is the Founder and CEO of Keen AI. Keen AI uses deep learning and predictive analytics to assess and predict the future state of overhead line transmission assets. Today, Keen AI is the largest processor of OHL transmission line data in the UK with customers in the UK, Asia and Australia.
Amjad Karim skills combine business acumen, honed working at major management consultancies, with mathematical and technical fluency having developed the algorithms used by Keen AI and the predictive risk models for National Grid’s Electricity Transmission network.
Digitalisation of Protection and Control in Transmission Substations
All aspects of our lives, from birth to death, have been reshaped by the Digital Revolution. It determines how we spend our leisure, work, communicate, relax, acquire knowledge, consume entertainment, travel and relate to family, friends, and colleagues.
Transforming our transmission and distribution grids into resilient, digital-first, self-healing networks is essential in supporting and managing complex, renewable-based energy systems, that delivers for end users energy flexibility, affordability and security.
Substation protection and control, and the standards associated with IEC 61850, are at the heart of the digital revolution. Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) from different vendors will communicate via Ethernet LANs and WANs, and when a fault occurs it will be rapidly cleared, and in most cases all supplies restored before the end user was even aware a problem had occurred.
Peter Crossley is Professor of Power Systems at the University of Manchester. After graduating with a BSc degree from UMIST and a PhD degree from the University of Cambridge in 1983, he joined GEC Measurements in Stafford. In 1991, he joined UMIST and progressed through numerous academic, research and administration roles, including Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Power Networks. He left Manchester in 2020, and returned in 2023 as a “part-time” Professor. Ideal for semi-retirement and the upkeep of a large garden. He is a named author on over 100 Journal and 300 Conference Papers, a Fellow of the Chinese Society of Electrical Engineers, a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Chartered Engineer in the UK, and is especially active in CIGRE B5 and the IET.
After a long career trying to understand the beauty and subtleties of power system protection, he still wants to help the next generation keep the lights on, in a world dominated by electrical energy, digitalisation, inverters, artificial intelligence and Net Zero.