Hi guys!  Marina Ventura here. 

Map App and I are on a mission to explore how we might generate our own electricity in the future… and distribute it to local people around us. And we need your help in designing it! 

Wanna come too? Excellent!

As we know, everything changes over time.  The existing National Grid was built to transport electricity from large power stations which were often located by the sea or near major transport hubs across the UK, to where its needed. But in the future, the whole energy world is changing shape.

You could describe the old grid as a bit like one giant water slide. Electricity went one way only. Huge power stations made energy for everyone to use.

But a future grid will be something much smarter. Instead of a small number of giant power stations, there’ll be millions of smaller energy generators all across the country and that will mean new ways to share it around.

And here’s the clever bit.  In the future, homes just like yours might not just USE electricity… they could help make it too!  There’s a techie word for that – instead of just CONsuming – we will be PROsumers!    Part Consumer – part producer.

If you’ve got solar panels on your roof, your house could make electricity during the day to keep the fridge, tv and lights going.  And if you generate more than you need, you could use an electric car battery as a gigantic power bank for your home!  Or you could send the spare power BACK into the grid for other people to use.

The future grid is going to be like a giant energy internet where electricity can move in lots of directions depending on where it’s needed most.

In the future, everything’s connected!  Homes, cars, batteries, wind farms…

The future grid will use digital technology like sensors, artificial intelligence and clever programming to devise solutions, make decisions and constantly balance electricity supplies in real time.  In the past, engineers had to figure out how much energy people needed today, tomorrow, next week using paper, pens and a calculator.  But a future systems will be able to react instantly. Imagine… millions of tiny smart helpers checking where power is needed every single second.

Kind of like air traffic control… but for electricity! And one big reason all this matters is because we’re using more electricity than ever before. Energy planners think electricity demand could rise by 50% by 2035, and double by 2050.  There’s some other challenges though as well!

The original grid was built around coal power stations, many of which were in the Midlands, the North of England and South Wales, as well as nuclear power stations located on our coastlines.

But renewable types of energy are often generated in completely different places… like giant offshore wind farms out in the North Sea!  And rather than a few, there’s LOADS of new energy producers.

That means new pylons, cables and substations to move all that clean energy from where it’s generated to where people live and work.

Whilst renewable energy is great to help tackle climate change, using nature raises it’s own set of challenges.

• Solar panels don’t work very well when its dark. And wind turbines need… well… wind.
• At other times, it might be too sunny and we generate more solar energy than we need.
• And if it’s really stormy, wind turbines might not be able to spin quick enough.

But that doesn’t mean they’re no good – we just need smart solutions… and fortunately engineers are amazing puzzle solvers.  It simply means future grids will rely much more on big batteries that can store extra energy when it’s sunny or windy, and release it later when demand rises.  Another solution are… microgrids.

“IT’S THE MIGHTY MICRO GRIDDERS!”

Hi Marina, we need your help.  When the power goes off, we all seem to be affected.  How can we help each other and keep the lights on?

Microgrids are like small local energy networks that can generate local energy and distribute it independently if there’s a major power cut in the grid.  Think of it as a mini energy island that keeps power flowing.

To design a micro-grid, start with three key things:

• how will you generate electricity
• how will you distribute it
• how can you save any surplus energy to use later. 

Next time, we’ll be getting local – finding out more about why things might be changing where YOU live!

Marina Ventura… and the Micro-Gridders
Made with support from Grid for Good by the National Grid