Building Local Energy Resilience: How PNDC is Enabling Customer-Supported Power Networks

 

Project Overview

As electricity becomes increasingly central to modern life—powering everything from heating and transport to communications and healthcare—the importance of resilient electricity networks has never been greater. Ensuring that communities can continue to access reliable power, even during unexpected disruptions, is becoming a critical priority for energy systems worldwide.

Resilient Customer Response (RCR), a Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) project, explored a new approach to maintaining electricity supply during grid outages by coordinating local energy resources within neighbourhood networks.

Led by Northern Powergrid (NPG) and delivered in collaboration with LCP Delta, the project investigated how localised microgrids supported by battery storage and customer energy assets could provide resilience when the wider electricity grid experiences disruptions.

Within the project, PNDC played a key role in designing and validating a sophisticated simulation environment to test the concept. Using advanced modelling tools and hardware-in-the-loop testing, PNDC analysed how distributed energy resources—including solar PV, home batteries, and electric vehicles—could work together with a central battery system to sustain local electricity supply.

The findings provide valuable insights for distribution network operators, policymakers, and technology providers seeking to improve network resilience in a future energy system dominated by distributed generation and electrified demand.
 

The Challenge: Building Resilience in a Changing Energy System

Electricity networks are undergoing a rapid transformation. The rise of renewable generation, electrified heating, and electric vehicles is driving significant changes in how electricity is generated and consumed.

At the same time, the increasing dependence of society on electricity means that outages can have far-reaching impacts. Distribution network operators measure these impacts using metrics such as Customer Interruptions (CI) and Customer Minutes Lost (CML). Minimising these disruptions is a key priority for modern electricity networks.

One of the most common challenges for distribution networks is a loss of mains (LOM) event—when a section of the network loses its connection to the wider grid.

Despite the rapid growth of customer-side technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and home batteries, these assets typically disconnect during grid disturbances due to safety standards. As a result, significant local energy capacity remains unused during outages, even though it could potentially support local electricity supply.

The RCR project set out to investigate how this untapped flexibility could be harnessed to support local resilience through coordinated microgrid operation.

The RCR Concept: Customer-Supported Microgrids

The core concept behind the project was to establish local microgrids anchored by a grid-forming battery energy storage system installed at the low-voltage substation. During normal operation, the network functions as part of the wider electricity grid. However, if the grid connection is lost, the system can automatically transition into islanded operation, allowing local energy resources to continue supplying electricity within the neighbourhood.

Three potential business models were initially considered during the project:

1. Commercial high-value model – customers provide stored energy in exchange for financial incentives.
2. Community microgrid model – resilience is delivered as part of a wider local energy community.
3. “Under the Hood” model – the system operates automatically without customer interaction.

Following stakeholder engagement and customer research, the project focused on the “Under the Hood” model, where resilience services operate seamlessly in the background.

In this approach:

• A central grid-forming BESS anchors the local microgrid.
• Behind-the-meter (BTM) assets—such as rooftop PV, home batteries, and electric vehicles—support the local supply.
• Customers do not need to actively participate or change behaviour.
• Energy from distributed assets helps extend the duration of supply during outages.

Insight

Designing for resilience without adding unnecessary complexity

The goal is to maximise resilience while maintaining a simple and practical system design that could realistically be deployed in future networks.

PNDC’s Role: Advanced Modelling and Validation

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Allan Downie, senior R&D engineer at PNDC

PNDC was responsible for developing and validating the technical model used to evaluate the RCR concept. Using real-time digital simulation tools, PNDC created a detailed representation of a residential low-voltage distribution network consisting of 72 households. The model incorporated:

• Rooftop solar PV systems
• Domestic battery storage
• Electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability
• Heat pumps
• A communal grid-forming battery at the local substation

This model was built using RSCAD software running on RTDS NovaCor hardware, enabling high-fidelity real-time simulation of network behaviour. Python scripting was used to automate scenario generation, asset allocation, and data analysis, allowing PNDC to evaluate how different levels of technology adoption would affect network resilience.

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Real-time simulation combined with hardware testing provides a platform for validating future energy systems before they are deployed in real-world networks.

Exploring the Future Energy Landscape

To understand how resilience could evolve over time, PNDC modelled future energy scenarios for the years 2030, 2040, and 2050. These scenarios were based on Northern Powergrid’s 2024 Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) projections and reflected increasing adoption of low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles, heat pumps, and rooftop solar. By 2050, neighbourhood networks could contain far greater levels of distributed energy than today.

Figure

LCT uptake percentages for future year scenarios based on NPG DFES 2024 data

Testing the Concept with Hardware-in-the-Loop

A key innovation in the project was the integration of power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) testing. Hardware-in-the-loop testing bridges the gap between digital simulation and real-world power system operation.

This capability demonstrates that PHIL testing can be used as a bridge between offline simulation and real-world deployment, providing confidence that proposed resilience solutions can perform effectively in practice under network conditions too impractical to try on a live network.

Figure

PHIL setup showing connections between interfaced elements

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RCR PHIL implementation

Key Findings

1. Customer Assets Enhance the Impact of Central Batteries
Simulations showed that a communal battery at the local substation could sustain the neighbourhood during short-duration peak demand outages. Crucially, the response of customers—through the use of home batteries and electric vehicles—can significantly extend this resilience, enabling longer periods of islanded operation and improving overall system support.

2. Future Energy Trends Strengthen the Case for Local Resilience
A highly sophisticated control strategy is not required to enhance resilience on the islanded network. A simple energy dispatch trigger based on the central BESS state of charge (SoC) was found to be effective.

3. V2G and EV Growth Could Redefine Distributed Resilience
Rapid growth in electric vehicle adoption, combined with the rollout of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, could fundamentally change the scale of distributed energy across neighbourhood networks. This expanded energy capacity has the potential to greatly increase the resilience that LV networks can sustain during grid outages.

Impact

Real-World Impact

The RCR project demonstrates how electricity networks could evolve to deliver localised resilience through coordinated energy systems. Coordinated energy systems could help future electricity networks become both low‑carbon and resilient. Solutions like RCR could play an important role in ensuring future electricity systems are resilient, reliable and customer‑focused.

This collaboration with Northern Powergrid and LCP Delta allowed us to investigate how distributed energy resources could enhance the resilience of microgrids during grid outages. By modelling a representative low-voltage network in a real-time simulation environment, we were able to evaluate how technologies such as PV, battery storage and vehicle-to-grid could help achieve this by maintaining stable voltage and frequency during islanded operation.

Akshaya

Assistant R&D Engineer

The technical simulation work undertaken at PNDC has grounded the design of the RCR solution in addressing practical engineering challenges. It has been essential for developing a convincing case that RCR-type solutions are feasible and worthy of further investigation. Throughout the project, PNDC have adapted to changing solution designs and developed pragmatic workarounds to the challenges that have arisen.

Chris Warwick

Consultant

PNDC: Enabling the Future of Resilient Energy Networks

Through advanced modelling, real-time simulation, and hardware-integrated testing, PNDC provides a world-leading platform for energy innovation. To explore collaboration opportunities or learn more about PNDC’s capabilities and multi-site innovation hub, please get in touch.

The PNDC project leads for the Resilient Customer Response Project were Senior R&D Engineer Allan Downie and Assistant R&D Engineer Akshaya Akshaya .