Ofgem and Innovate UK have today announced the launch of a £500 million energy fund.
Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund opens for applications on 26th May and aims to attract projects that focus on upgrading the energy network – bringing them to trial or launch. Delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, the SIF is funded by Ofgem.
Five innovation challenges, recommended by the Energy Networks Innovation Taskforce and endorsed by Ofgem, set out the core priorities for the coming five-year RIIO-3 price control period.
The challenges announced today have been co-designed by partners across industry with customers at their heart, and they are:
• Industrial and business connection acceleration – major new strategic industrial sites can be energised and operational within six months by 2033
• Faster build and maintenance – 50% faster, 20% cheaper network build and maintenance by 2035
• Instant use domestic energy devices – enable instant, plug-and-play connections of domestic energy devices and appliances by 2032
• Eliminating energy outages – near-zero interruptions via autonomous reconfiguring and islanding of any section of the network by 2038
• Decentralised system balancing – deliver products and services to prove the viability of autonomous local balancing and optimisation of networks at every level by 2034
Energy network companies will work with energy innovators to bid for funding from the SIF based on these challenges. The set of innovation challenges were formally announced at the SIF’s Annual Innovation Meeting in Westminster this morning.
Marzia Zafar (pictured), SRO for the Strategic Innovation Fund at Ofgem, said: “I am delighted to endorse these Challenges on behalf of Ofgem. These Challenges matter because they represent the entire sector raising the bar. They signal clearly the collective ambition of senior leaders to work together to deliver a more resilient, more flexible and more consumer-focused energy system.
“Meeting these Innovation Challenges will improve consumers’ lives and move us closer to a net-zero energy system with genuine growth potential – in short, it will help us drive towards an energy infrastructure that is fit for the future.”
Laura Sandys CBE, Chair of Energy Networks Innovation Taskforce, said: “These five highly ambitious challenges have been co-designed by over 150 organisations, with customers of the energy sector playing a significant role and should mark a fundamental change in how we shape and more importantly deploy network innovation at scale across the energy sector.
“Meeting these challenges will reduce costs, unlock economic growth, and deliver a Net Zero energy system that meets the real needs of its users.”
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Jodie Giles, Deputy Director of SIF, Innovate UK, said: “Thank you to everyone involved in helping set these challenges. The work starts here to build communities of practice around each challenge where coordination and cross sector collaboration is the norm.
“This is about realising the value of innovation by achieving impact through deployment, to improve lives, grow businesses, and address climate change. We can’t wait to see creative and transformational innovation emerge in response to these challenges.”
Guy Newey, CEO of Energy Systems Catapult, said: “This is about innovators. It’s about connecting the amazing engines of creativity and resourcefulness that we have in the UK with the biggest problems that the energy sector faces – so that radically different organisations can work together to build a better system.
“Energy Systems Catapult are honoured to have supported the delivery of the Taskforce, and to have contributed our perspectives to the development of these Innovation Challenges. We’re impatient to see how the sector will pick these up and run with them.”
Launched in 2021, the fund previously invested £450m during the RIIO-2 price control period.
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