Britain’s future national energy system operator to be a ‘digital leader’

National Grid ESO has renewed its digitalisation strategy to ensure the future National Energy System Operator (NESO) is a digital leader and drives collaborative digitalisation of the whole energy system.

The strategy is aimed to build on previous digitalisation efforts with a focus on transforming the organisation’s people, processes, data and technology in this next ‘digital first’ stage and as a step towards becoming a ‘digital leader’.

The ESO defines ‘digital first’ as integrating digital into every aspect of the business and thinking digital beyond the ESO and for the industry and beyond existing technology.

The ‘digital leader’ embeds digital in every aspect of the business and operates with continuous digital reinvention, facilitating digital collaboration within and beyond the industry.

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The strategy is intended to ensure the NESO can meet its responsibilities, including its increased industry leadership role and delivering the increasingly complex future scenarios.

“Our evolution to the future system operator in 2024 will position us at the heart of the energy transition, catalysing broader industry innovation and collaboration as our role expands beyond electricity,” writes Shubhi Rajnish, ESO Chief Information Officer, in the foreword to the strategy document.

“This, combined with the increased volume of data and information in the industry, the fast pace of digital innovation around the world, the growing intricacy of the energy ecosystem, and the evolving needs of our customers, require strategic reinvention from us.”

The strategy is focused on four themes:

• Facilitating industry technological expertise by staying abreast of emerging technologies, industry trends and sharing digital best practices.
• Maximising the value of data by leveraging it to inform decisions and enhance operational efficiencies.
• Helping to set the industry’s digital direction through collaborating on the development of data standards and accessible, reliable, and interoperable data.
• Exploring innovation opportunities by collaborating and partnering with all our existing and emerging partners.

Underlying these is a set of principles, with the digital culture at the centre and the delivery of digital and data throughout the organisation then facilitated through the digital customer experience, being future technology-led, utilising modern architecture, creating a data and information ecosystem and being AI driven in approaches to all digital initiatives.

The National Grid ESO envisages the ‘digital first’ phase evolving into the ‘digital leader’ phase from 2026.

By then interoperability and resilience across the energy system will be possible through greater digitalisation.

By 2035 digitalisation is envisaged as being a fundamental part of the whole energy system as it enables greater market facilitation of flexibility actions as the electricity system becomes fully decarbonised and electricity from renewable sources surpasses 50%.