Rewiring Britain

It’s quite a mix of needs, wants and demands. We will be consuming more electricity. We need to generate more renewable electricity. We need to renew parts of our supply network while simultaneously keeping all the lights on. What is more, we need to do all this at a time of huge public sector financial strain while also delivering value for money for the UK taxpayer. Quite a remit. “Our existing supply network is getting close to its design life.” explains Peter Black, Managing Director at Mott MacDonald, who heads up the Transmission and Distribution Division with over thirty -years of technical and commercial experience in the energy sector behind him. “The bulk of the existing network infrastructure was designed and built in the 1960s and 1970s when it had a shelf life of around 40 years.”

A lot has changed since that time. Recognising the increased demand for electricity over the last thirty to forty years and the need to replace existing assets, National Grid also has the added challenge of accommodating the connection to the system of renewable energy sources such as wind power which, in itself presents technical difficulties requiring innovative and key changes to the network. National Grid has risen to the above challenges by embarking on an ambitious capital programme to effectively ‘rewire Britain’. “The real drivers for this capital programme,” says Black, are demand growth, integration of renewables and replacement of ageing assets.” What the UK needs to do is to use energy much more smartly and sparingly, while not compromising on the capacity and reliability of electricity supply. The reliability and safety performance of National Grid is very good. The standard has already been set. But one of the challenges we face now is build the power grid more secure and adaptable to all types of generation sources.

Tough targets and challenges
Nowadays most governments need to outsource expertise in major capital expenditure projects. The refurbishment of the UK’s energy infrastructure is no exception. “Our expertise is pooled,” says Black. “What National Grid did was to split England and Wales into four distinct regions. They then asked for several alliances to be put together and subject to successful tender, an alliance would deliver work in each of these regions.”

An alliance of Mott MacDonald, Alstom Grid (equipment design/supply), and Scanska (civil constructon) operating in JV partnership then went on to win the contract for the South East region of England. A five-year programme worth £650m in total.

What are the particular technical challenges of the project? “The overriding challenge of the project is to prove and deliver value for money.” says Black with no hesitation. “That’s the main thing. Also, we are talking about refurbishing and expanding the capacity of existing assets but without affecting power supplies. Considering that we have to build a new sub-station and replace essential equipment in the middle of London and with that there is no way you can allow the lights to go out… Not easy.” Indeed not.

To their credit, the Mott MacDonald team and its alliance partners are getting around such issues by carefully planning and completing the work in stages, which also minimises the risk to existing supply quality and outage risk. Another pressure is space, or rather, the lack of it. That means solutions have always got to be tightly packed while also offering good accessibility for on-going maintenance for the next several decades.

“We have significant congestion issues!” says Black. “It leads to technical challenges. Look at what is happening in the Thames Estuary. That’s a very good example of an area experiencing significant upgrades in terms of substations but also needing to connect offshore wind capability. That’s a lot to take on.” Not to mention all the associated civil and connection works plus interfacing with substation control and protection systems.

Always sustainable
“Any Mott MacDonald project always carries a strong ethos of sustainability to it.” insists Black. “In the alliance we’re always looking at the sustainability of projects and how good design provides for this. A good example of Mott MacDonald and its alliance partner’s sustainability commitment was the requirement that all switchgear and associated equipment needed for operations isn’t dispatched to them in the usual way: in heavy, wooden containers. “After a careful review, we asked suppliers simply to send items unwrapped and with reusable delivery carriers. From an eco-view, that request helps reduce substantial cost and material wastage.  We’re always looking at reducing our own carbon footprint, for example looking for equipment that can deliver a smaller footprint. It’s absolutely core to the way we work.”

The changes being brought by Mott MacDonald and its key partners, together with National Grid, are clearly considerable. The present programme of refurbishment of the UK’s energy infrastructure presents the opportunity to integrate recent technological advances and to build the power networks of the future.
“There’s definitely fundamental change in the design philosophy. We call much of our work “lean build capability” where we are looking to build substations that have a modest footprint yet are highly sophisticated. Safety is paramount. But with lean build smart design, significant elements can be modularised and standardised for use all over the country. In that respect, it’s much more advanced than what went before.”

Accountable and on time
Of course, all this work has to be paid for, and at a time of enormous worry about the state of finances. How, then, is project success and value for money measured? “We can compare success and value for money by comparing projects we’ve done in the past with how we are performing now. It measures well with a significant increase in volume delivered in the past four years. It’s also necessary to ensure that projects meet the requirements of the government regulator, Ofgem.”

Mott MacDonald and its partners are bound by strict target costs but are also incentivised to beat them. Savings against target are shared with the client.

However, there’s other pressure. By 2020, the UK has to meet its own EU legally binding 20-20-20 targets. These are a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 20 percent below 1990 levels; 20 percent of energy consumption to come from renewable resources and a 20 percent improvement of energy efficiency; all by 2020. The pressures here are considerably higher for developed nations such as the UK and Germany than for many other EU states. To achieve the targets, we need to connect sufficient renewable sourced power generation with the enhanced electricity networks. Both infrastructures should be built simultaneously. “We believe that the power grid will continue to energise our nation’s decarbonised economy in the 21st Century”, says Black confidently, “and so far we are on time and on target.”

The Mott MacDonald Group is a global management, engineering and development consultancy with more than 14,000 staff, £1bn revenue and work in 140 countries for the public and private sectors. The employee-owned company is ranked 13th in the 2010 Sunday Times 25 ‘Best Big Companies to Work For’ survey. Mott MacDonald’s core business sectors cover buildings, transport, energy, water, environment, health, education, industry, communications and international development.