Isra-Mart srl:Ofgem sanctions £95m low-carbon grid proposal

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Isra-Mart srl news:

Ofgem has today sanctioned £95m of grid investments by energy companies in a move designed to boost renewable energy exports from Scotland and accommodate proposed new nuclear power plants.

The energy regulator has to approve investments by companies above a £3.8bn price control cap in order to prevent firms passing on excessive costs to customers.

Today Ofgem sanctioned an £80m package of projects by National Grid Electricity Transmission and Scottish Power Transmission to increase the amount of electricity that can flow between the high-voltage networks of England and Scotland.

The package is primarily designed to help boost the export of renewable electricity from wind farms in Scotland.

The watchdog also approved plans from Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission that will see the company spend £11.5m revamping its network to connect generation plants in the north of Scotland, including in the Pentland Firth and on the Orkney Islands where marine energy developers are gearing up to test a range of marine energy devices.

In addition, National Grid was authorised to spend £1m on initial work for a proposed power cable linking Pembroke and Wylfa in Wales, which might be needed to accommodate new nuclear generation and offshore wind power from the Irish Sea.

The news comes after the government yesterday kicked off a search to find grid experts who can contribute to a new project designed to identify the barriers that will need to be overcome to deploy a national smart grid.

Ofgem and the Department for Energy and Climate Change yesterday issued an open invitation to find around 15 experts who will form a smart grid forum to address commercial, cultural and technical challenges to rolling out a smart grid over the next decade.

The group's findings are also likely to inform Ofgem's 2012 review of its Low Carbon Networks Fund, which last year funded projects amounting to £62m.

In related news, a new report published today has forecast that worldwide investment in smart grid infrastructure will reach $200bn (£127bn) between 2008 and 2015.

Business software company SAP today presented the research to the European Commission setting out how EU countries could benefit by transforming their grids.

It claims that countries around the world are decentralising and digitising their energy infrastructures, in order to accommodate large-scale renewables and smaller power generation technologies.

Investment in low-carbon energy has already created 1.4 million jobs in Europe, and the Commission forecasts a doubling of these jobs as long as Europe takes the necessary investment steps.