CIRG: Energy Industry Resilience - Collaborative Opportunities with Scottish Power Energy Networks

The session will be of value to anyone with an interest in energy networks and resilience. It will be led by Professor James Yu, the Head of Innovation at SP Energy Networks (in 2020, James was awarded an MBE for his services to the electricity industry and innovation). James will provide an overview of SP Energy Networks and their Open Innovation work, focusing on their Predict4Resilience project. Through the Predict4Resilience project, SP Energy Networks are developing an application that uses data science to predict the impact of severe and adverse weather on the electricity networks. The aim is to improve the resilience of energy infrastructure by developing better capacity for weather forecasting and fault prediction, enabling a more nuanced response to extreme weather and its impact.

SP Energy Networks are looking to connect with CIRG members in order to develop collaborations and identify potential expertise in this area. They are interested in learning about projects (current or past), case studies (national or international) and literature that may relate to the Predict4Resilience project. They are also interested in learning about relevant methods, products and datasets that may enable them predict the weather more accurately with longer visibility and identify its impact on infrastructure in order to protect their customers’ supply. 

For CIRG members this session will provide a valuable opportunity to start a conversation with one of the UK’s leading energy companies, with a view towards developing future collaborations. It will also offer an opportunity to engage with a real-world infrastructure resilience problem/project and to learn more about the resilience issues that energy providers are grappling with.  

The event itself will be fully online and will loosely take the following form: 

15:00-15:15 - Introduction of SP Energy Networks and its Open Innovation work 

15:15-15:30 - Overview of the Strategic Innovation Fund and Predict4Resilience, and the key barriers to building resilience the project aims to overcome 

15:30-16:00 - Discussion/Q&A 

You will not need to prepare anything for the session, but we would like to encourage participants to read through the information about the Predict4Resilience project and to think about questions you might like to ask James during the Q&A/Discussion section. 

If you would like to join the session or if you have any further questions, please email Dr Alexander R. E. Taylor (aret2@cantab.ac.uk) by 10th June 2022 to receive a Microsoft Teams link.