The Isle of Wight (IoW) offers a large potential for renewable energy power generation including wind, solar, tidal etc. The electricity network currently cannot cope with the needed expansion in such power generation and has been under a strain for some time. The current level of generation especially from solar PV, has already resulted in short periods when the Island's generation exceeds its demand and it becomes an exporter of power via the three national 132kV interconnectors to the mainland. However, such interconnectors are now 'full' meaning that, at periods of maximum supply and minimum demand, they are unable to carry all the surplus generation to the mainland. This in essence resulted in curtailing new generation projects due to the very high reinforcement costs needed rendering such projects uneconomic.
The Isle of Wight Council wishes to promote low carbon generation and increase its current level of 90MW up to approximately 200MW. The 'infrastructure' solution to allow this would be to install an additional interconnector, but this is unlikely to happen due to cost, timescale and environmental constraints. This project will address solutions to achieve such a target by looking at opportunities for local consumption demands (including domestic and industrial), storage, hydrogen production and storage, how the grid can be adapted to allow this expansion as well as economic, social and environmental assessment related to a high low carbon IoW. The research will also address (i) current grid capacity and how this can be made more flexible, (ii) the connections costs (iii) the balance between local consumption and export and (iv) smart grid solutions.