Examination of Witnesses (Questions 292-299)
ENERGY NETWORKS
ASSOCIATION
31 OCTOBER 2006
Q292 Chairman: Gentlemen and lady, I
repeat the apology that we made to the last witnesses for messing
you around yesterday, but it was in a good cause, I think you
will understand, and we had little choice. Thank you very much
for coming for what is, I think, the last evidence session of
our inquiry of this subject, unless we make a visit to Woking,
as we intended to this morning. Can I begin by asking you to introduce
yourselves?
Mr Goodall: Good morning Chairman,
good morning Committee, my name is Nick Goodall and I am the Chief
Executive of the Energy Networks Association. I am joined today
by two colleagues who are perfectly capable of introducing themselves.
Mr Phelps: Andy Phelps, I am the
Head of Regulation at the ENA.
Dr Popovic: I am Dragana Popovic;
I look after integration of distributed generation and renewables
into electricity networks.
Mr Goodall: With your permission,
I have brought them with me today because they will answer all
the difficult questions—some of these questions can become
enormously technical and complicated.
Q293 Chairman: That is helpful. Again
for the record, we have had your written evidence, for which we
are very grateful. What is the Energy Networks Association? I
think it is self-explanatory but you might like to tell us a little
about who you are and whom you represent?
Mr Goodall: Indeed. The Energy
Networks Association is a body funded by all of the UK's electricity
and gas transmission and distribution licence holders. It performs
two functions: one, as a common interest group it looks at matters
that affect the companies in terms of their regulatory interests,
relationships with the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment
Agency, and so forth; and also fairly uniquely amongst such common
interest organisations it also performs quite a lot of in-common
technical work, for example equipment specification; we operate
a distribution code for electricity networks; and a variety of
other activities. As such we are very pleased that when we make
statements that they are invariably based on a very solid, technical
founding. The funding of the organisation is almost entirely by
membership subscription from the 11 companies in membership. There
is some minor earned income from running the odd conference, and
so forth, and the operation of one or two of the technical services
which have to go wider than the networks. If I give you one example,
we operate a national equipment defect reporting database, which
lists every network asset operated by the companies in the UK
and many other companies who operate electricity network assets,
and we report on the asset performance back to those as companies.
Q294 Chairman: That is helpful. Obviously
we want particularly to talk to you today about decentralising
the grid and what that means for your members who are very much
at the sharp end of that process. We have heard that it is so
far really only the early adopters who have taken up microgeneration,
or local energy production, but all the same there has been quite
an increase in local energy production over the last few years.
What impact has that already had on the networks?
Mr Goodall: If we are talking
about microgeneration—and Dragana can give you some more
details—it might be useful to clarify if we are talking
about distributed generation at large because of course quite
often the terms are confused.
Q295 Chairman: Exactly.
Mr Goodall: Again, I am going
to defer to Dragana to give you some numbers and some insights.
If we take everything that is not centralised generation, to cover
the gamut of distributed as a relatively modest level of penetration
that the Government aspire to have more of—
Q296 Chairman: Quite a big CHP plant,
of course.
Mr Goodall: Indeed, and of course
a large wind farm is distributed generation in the same way as
a rooftop turbine might be, and I think it is quite important
that we understand and are very clear as to which niches of the
generation market you are looking at. Dragana, perhaps you would
want to suggest the current levels of penetration of DG in the
systems?
Dr Popovic: Thank you. As Nick
has pointed out already, when we are talking about distributed
generation, for example for electricity networks, we do not make
a distinction between the renewables and distributed generation
or generation which is connected to a distribution network. However,
for the purposes of this evidence and our memorandum, which we
already submitted to you, we've adopted the definition which is
essentially the same, or relatively similar, to the one the Energy
Review document has suggested, which means generation which does
not directly depend on a transmission system or is not connected
to a transmission system directly, but of course relies on—
Q297 Chairman: On the national grid,
you mean?
Dr Popovic: Yes, the national
grid. So from that point of view we can say that even though,
maybe, the connection levels or volume of connection has not been
as government has expected, there has been, as you pointed out,
a significant increase in distributed generation, which I am again
saying generation which is connected to distribution networks.
However, the spread has not been even and some parts of the country
have been affected more than the others and in some areas we have
approximately a 7 or 8% increase on the year-to-year basis, while
in other areas there has been almost no increase or a very steady
increase. Wind has contributed the most, is the most mature and
developed technology so far, while, for example, the take-up of
microgeneration has not been significant. So the volume of microgeneration
currently connected to a distribution network in particular is
relatively small. So if you would like some numbers I can give
you some numbers, but I can maybe summarise that we currently
have about seven megawatt of solar PV microgenerators, and only
about 500 kilowatts of micro-CHP. So considering that our installed
generation capacity is approximately 68 gigawatts you can see
the low level or the low volume of microgeneration in particular.
You asked, I think, at the beginning what has been the impact.
When we are talking about medium or slightly larger-scale distributed
generation (I am still talking about generation connected to distribution
networks only), so the impact has been on voltage control, on
faults levels management, on power flow management, and to some
extent when you are talking about microgeneration in particular
the impact could be on power quality, voltage rise and—
Q298 Chairman: What I suppose I want
to know is whether that impact has been difficult to manage and
whether any particular aspect of the distributed generation we
are talking about, either its regional concentration or the nature
of the production, its intermittency, say, has caused a particular
difficulty to the network?
Mr Goodall: It remains a fact
that the current arrangements are dominated by centralised generation
and the relatively small amounts managed, shall we say, in that
the existing systems, which are predicated around conventional
systems, have been sufficiently robust and flexible to cope with
what has been asked of it thus far. The real question has come
about the further level of penetration that might be sought, which,
as Dr Popovic has indicated, varies at a regional level.
Chairman: That is helpful and deals with
my question; that is precisely what I want to ask you about now.
We will move to a series of questions. Roger Berry.
Q299 Roger Berry: On the one hand
there are those who want to see the pursuit of nuclear new build
and at the same time a rapid growth of microgeneration. Are those
two approaches compatible, given the different impacts that they
have on the networks? I genuinely want to get my head round this.
Mr Goodall: The one word answer
is yes.
| 
