Northern Powergrid has announced an investment of £83m in a smart grid programme that is expected to help the region for rapid growth of electric vehicles, domestic heat pumps and renewable power.

The programme known as Smart Grid Enablers, is claimed to be UK’s most comprehensive network upgrade programme. It will be developed to become the backbone of a smart grid that can support the country’s ambitions of putting low-carbon technology at the centre, while enabling solutions that can save up to £500m by 2031.

The programme is expected to be completed by 2023 and could radically change the company’s network since the 1970s.

It will help in transforming the network's ability to monitor, control and communicate with more than 8,000 substations that deliver power to over 3.9 million homes and businesses in the North East, Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire.

The programme is also expected support the company's transition into a distribution system operator. 

It will upgrade equipment dating from the 1950s to the 1990s with new technology, including installation of high-bandwidth digital communications links to over 860 major substations and 7,200 secondary substations replacing old analogue links.

The upgrade will also include replacing transformer monitoring control units in 750 major substations; replacing or upgrading substation controllers in over 860 major substations; and installing monitoring equipment for the first time in 1,300 secondary substations and obtaining data from 2,000 existing sites.

Northern Powergrid policy and markets director Patrick Erwin said: “Our Smart Grid Enablers programme is putting our region at the forefront of the low-carbon revolution. It will make us ready to support rapid growth of electric vehicles, heat pumps and solar power in the next decade, while maintaining a reliable system and keeping costs as low as possible for all our customers.

“This is the most comprehensive upgrade programme of any UK network operator and will give us a state of the art command and control capability, enabling us to respond to real-time information about power flow on our network.”

Image: Northern Powergrid from the UK to develop smart grid programme. Photo: Courtesy of Northern Powergrid Holdings Company.