FROM THE INDUSTRY
lower cost energy to the individual, to the consumer. It provides more resilience, energy security and means we don’t have to overbuild from a community or distribution network level. All that’s a five- year journey. What else is happening? At present, smart meters connect to the cellular network. Of course, there are homes that don’t have cellular, but they do have broadband. So, we came up with a solution so it can connect over the in-home Wi-Fi and use the broadband network to get the data from the smart meter back to the smart DCC. Smart DCC is a solution that connects smart meters to energy suppliers directly, via a separate network, The Data Communications Company. This uses broadband connectivity as a backhaul. The total forecast for any home on a smart metering network is about two megabits for the whole month; divide that over your 30 days in the month, that’s a very small packet size needed. So you’re not losing anything from a home network, but you’re gaining from being able to get a smart meter. At some point in the future, every home needs to be orchestrated. There’s a lot of talk at the moment around our energy system, around more access to data, better access to data. Data should be made available for people to be able to use, to share, and to innovate with it. Ideally, keep the value with the consumer. If the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining for five minutes, your house might need to respond. Use the EV battery for the next five minutes. We know the sun’s going to come back in 10 minutes, so that’s fine. But if you know the sun’s not going to come back for 30 minutes, you might say, I’m going to ramp down charging your car for 30 minutes because I’ve just seen you put the oven on. Those have to happen in real time. That’s a smart network. Using AI for a lot of these micro-decisions presumably? Absolutely, there’s a lot of initiatives now around the use of AI in critical national infrastructure. I would not trust any AI system today, because I think those that are building the models have removed some of those safety guardrails that were there. We’ve seen that clearly with the likes of both Anthropic and OpenAI, because it became a bit of a war game, didn’t it?
- and distribute across the country. We’ve seen some transition, there are more distributed grid scale assets, wind farms either offshore or onshore. There have been big changes, but we’re still seeing significant constraints affecting efficiency. What kind of constraints? We spent £2bn last year turning off wind farms because we’re generating an awful lot of energy in the North Sea, but we can’t get it down to London because the transmission network can’t handle it. Just one example. What’s the answer to that? Actually, putting more assets closer to the people that need them, which is what the Local Power Plan sets out to do. There are roughly 8000 communities in the UK; that’s a lot of opportunities to drive a bit more resilience. As we electrify society, we’re only going to see more demand. Communities can be anything from 200 homes to 2000 homes; how are we going to distribute that? We’re not going to dig up the road and replace all the cables. It needs to be a real smart system at a home level and community level, and it needs to have some visibility and insight into what’s happening at the distribution network. This all seems a bit daunting. Cheer me up. We must think about getting more assets at community level. If we can orchestrate all of this and get everyone talking to each other and will be fine. What happens in 2035 when every home has two EV cars, a heat pump, a battery - how are we going to service all that? EVs are batteries that could be used to store energy, which could last three to four weeks, that would save energy costs. That provides energy security, because we’re not subject to the same volatility. If you’ve got two EVs you can use those as an asset to charge them when the wind’s blowing or the sun’s shining, and use them when it’s not; you could really smooth out your demand curve and almost be zero cost homes at some point in the future.
One of the major hurdles affecting data centre expansion is national grid preparedness, along with a host of other obstacles. The grid, established in 1935, is a fairly recent chapter in the history of energy in the UK, beginning in the 1750s with the emerging industrial revolution, powered by coal. Forced to continually reinvent itself as world wars, population booms, industrialisation, privatisation and the technological revolution played out over the years, the national grid is about to face its greatest challenge yet, providing the immense levels of power needed to accommodate the dramatic growth of data centres, driven by the explosion in AI, adapting to net-zero objectives amid a headline-grabbing, unstable energy market. There are countless encouraging initiatives out there, but like a lot of areas in emerging technologies, there is almost too much activity to keep track of efficiently – they aren’t talking to each other very well. Standards vary, industry bodies litter the landscape but nobody is taking ownership. Legislation is glacial and can’t possibly keep up, short-term politics hampers progress and legacy systems are proving harder to replace than anticipated. Mike is an optimist however, and his mood was contagious. We talked to him after the event, hopeful our fears might be allayed, that we might turn to face the solar panels and bask in their warm glow. It’s a fast-moving sector, energy. What’s happened in the last few months? The UK Warm Homes Plan was announced recently; that’s a £15bn fund aiming to upgrade 5m homes via insulation, solar panels and heat pumps to reduce energy bills and reduce poverty. In January, we also saw the launch of the Local Power Plan as well, the flagship policy from Labour’s Great British Energy, which aims to deliver 8 gigawatts of locally owned, clean power by 2030 via the creation of community led, shared ownership projects all over the country. Historically we’ve had a network where everything’s generated centrally - big power stations, nuclear reactors
This seems obvious, if complicated.
It’s not just about just top down but bottom up is going to be important. It delivers
Volume 48 No.2 MAY 2026
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