Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has partnered Dundee City Council for its Regional Energy System Optimisation Planning (RESOP) project.
The project will develop a whole system planning tool to help support Dundee’s net zero target of 2045 and its green economic recovery.
The tool will be able to incorporate objectives and drivers for local authorities and businesses aiming to protect jobs and rebuild economic growth, with the ability to then assess the impact of these plans on the local electricity network.
It will also be able to model the likely outcomes of future scenarios to help inform local decision making.
The RESOP project received £343,000 in Network Innovation Funding in January, and the tool will be “instrumental in giving local communities a greater say in their energy future and helping to accelerate the decarbonisation of heat and transport” according to SSEN.
Fully decarbonising heat and transport will require better information, the DNO continued, so that network operators can manage the new demand. It also pointed to the ability for low carbon technologies to help balance the network in return by providing flexibility at key times.
The RESOP project is therefore to allow a whole system solution to be developed that takes into account a wide range of assets and infrastructure to meet the needs of a city.
SSEN recently published its ‘greenprint’ document detailing five recommendations to help the economy rebound. As part of this, it called for the deployment of Local Area Energy Plans to help empower communities during the net zero transition.
The RESOP tool fits within that vision, it said, helping to give local communities a greater say in their energy future.
Stewart Reid, head of future networks at SSEN, said the company is looking forward to working with the Dundee team to “understand how SSEN can best support the city as it builds a green economy”.
Once the tool is operational, SSEN plans to make it more widely available. This would help to “support other local authorities with their own decision making and to help them to meet their increasingly ambitious net zero targets,” Reid added.
