Key takeaways
Digitising knowledge and advancing staff training and skills development are essential for FCR roll-out
Wide acceptability for automation of monotonous routines, alarm management and stress-reduction processes supports industry readiness and FCR acceptability
FCR is a critical enabler of a reliable, resilient, and customer-focused energy system in an increasingly complex and low-carbon world
FCR is not just a technological upgrade, but a strategic capability that underpins the transition to a smarter, more flexible, and sustainable grid
The Challenge
Transmission and distribution control rooms are facing increasing operational complexity as renewable generation, distributed energy resources (DER), electrification, flexibility services, and changing network behaviours reshape the energy system. Existing control room capabilities, processes, and decision-support tools were largely designed for a more predictable and centrally managed network, creating challenges in maintaining safe, reliable, efficient, and resilient operations at increasing speed and scale.
The challenge is to understand how emerging technologies, including AI-driven analytics, advanced visualisation, digital twins, automation, predictive decision support, enhanced DER visibility, and cyber-resilient architectures, can transform control room operations.
The project sought to identify the capabilities, investment priorities, and innovation pathways required to enable a proactive, intelligent and human-support-centred control room that can enable the evolving energy system while maintaining or improving customer outcomes, security of supply, and operational resilience.
Project Overview
The project developed a Future Control Room (FCR) white paper for transmission and distribution networks, exploring how automation, decision intelligence and emerging technologies can transform control room operations. The scope of the white paper covers defining the FCR vision statement, roadmap, challenges, innovative actions and the role of technology. Key activities included assessing current and future operational challenges, identifying priority innovation opportunities, and developing a roadmap of potential investment options based on timeliness, cost and impact. The intended FCR outcomes are to provide better fault tolerance, resilience, security, situational awareness and operational efficiency, while enabling greater integration of renewable generation and DERs and supporting faster, better-informed operator decisions.
Vision statement
The future control room is an integrated, safe operational platform that unifies data, analytics, automation, and human decision-making to enable resilient, financially optimised transmission, distribution, and DER operations.
Core Principles
- Operator role: Human-in-the-loop supervisory design for safe and resilient performance.
- FCR technology: Automation-centric and augmented operator experience.
- Whole system convergence: Collaboration and T&D (including multi-vector energy) integration.
PNDC’s Role
Understanding and evaluating the architectural, technological, and operational models for future control rooms is essential to keeping pace with the rapid evolution of transmission and distribution networks, while maintaining or enhancing reliability, resilience, and security of supply. PNDC led the research and developed the FCR white paper in collaboration with the project partners – SSEN Transmission and ScottishPower Energy Networks, bringing together industry perspectives and identifying emerging capabilities required to support increasingly complex and decentralised energy systems.
- The white paper sets out technology and capability options across multiple time horizons, including RIIO-T3 and beyond, by providing a basis for innovation and investment decisions, through the prioritisation of control room activities, personnel skills upgrades and the sequencing of automation and decision-intelligence investments across RIIO planning horizons.
- The white paper also identifies opportunities for continued collaboration and innovation between the partners, supporting stronger industry engagement and future growth opportunities. The scale and pace of change required for FCR transformation demands collaboration across utilities, technology providers, research organisations, and wider industry stakeholders beyond traditional Business as Usual (BAU) activities.
Methodology
This project drew on PNDC’s research and industry engagement expertise, building an evidence-based picture of what future control rooms will need through:
- Stakeholder engagement and requirements elicitation
- Survey design and data collection
- Literature review and benchmarking
- Data analysis and evidence synthesis
- Validation and iteration
- Reporting and framework development
Key Findings
The vision of FCR is a resilient and autonomous self-healing system that integrates TO–SO, DSO and DER to guarantee energy resilience, stability and consumer confidence.
The FCR challenges extend beyond technology development to its integration, acceptability and workforce development into the operational processes.
The short-term priority should be to enhance real-time network visibility, improve alarm management, and improve fault response times to deliver fewer unplanned outages, faster restoration for customers, and greater network access to enable critical reinforcement projects essential for achieving clean power targets.
Innovations should drive transmission and distribution collaboration and alignment for FCR projects, considering the strategic needs defined in the technology impact assessment (TIA) and customer satisfaction.
BAU should follow a phased approach where each project portfolio is incorporated into well-defined workstreams, while minimising associated risks.
What the project delivered
Defined a roadmap and vision for FCR
Highlighted FCR challenges and mitigation strategies
Extrapolated core innovative projects to enable FCR integration
De-risk, demonstrate, and deploy the innovative capabilities translated into BAU
The Future Control Room project, delivered with our excellent partners at PNDC, has provided valuable insight into the challenges and opportunities associated with operating the future electricity network. Working closely with the PNDC team, we have drawn on expertise from across industry and academia to identify practical implementation pathways towards delivering a future control room capable of operating an increasingly complex and dynamic electricity network. PNDC’s technical expertise, collaborative approach and ability to bring together a diverse range of stakeholders were instrumental to the success of the project, helping to generate actionable recommendations that can inform future investment, technology deployment and operational change across the industry.
The project has helped shape our thinking on how control room operations can evolve to support electrification, increased network complexity and greater customer expectations, while identifying tangible innovation opportunities for industry adoption. The PNDC team brought strong technical insight, an excellent understanding of network operations and a highly collaborative approach that ensured the outputs remained both ambitious and grounded in practical implementation.
