On 4th October 2018, the IET Midlands Power Group hosted the annual Toby Norris Memorial Lecture at Austin Court. We were delighted to welcome Ian Graves, CEO and Owner of Competitive Future Ltd and Past Chair of the MPG and Silan Celik, Project Development Engineer with National Grid who together delivered a thought provoking lecture entitled 'Journey to the Grid Edge' which brilliantly reflected the inimitable style of Professor Norris...."wonderfully interesting and curious". Ian and Silan presented, to an audience of over 50 attendees, a perspective on how the electricity supply sector is having to react rapidly to the transformation from being 'big utility' led to being Customer and specialist SME driven. The changes arising from the growth in commercial and domestic solar/battery technologies, the decentralisation of generation, the shift to electrification of transport, and the availability of 'app-based' technology providing increased control of usage by customers are all leading to a shift in influence away from the traditional System Operator towards the users at the 'Grid Edge'.
Ian outlined how these changes are leading the Utility companies to a critical crossroads - either stepping into the technology space and engaging directly with the smaller, more nimble providers and enabling them (akin to software companies encourage App developers with their Operating System), or becoming more of a back-office network and security provider. Whichever the path, the opportunities for engineers to be actively involved in shaping and delivering the desired outcome for both the industry players and the customers are enormous. The audience was then reminded of the importance of innovation to achieve the successful outcomes and how it must be more than just good ideas. Innovation must take into account the impact and value that can be delivered, along with the need for the right team and implementation strategy.
Ian closed the very engaging lecture with his own future gazing perspective and challenged the engineering fraternity to recognise the breadth of new skills required going forward and rise to the challenge of unlocking the capacity of the networks through increased flexibility but without compromising reliability and availability.
The lecture ended with a very dynamic Q&A session before closing with a Vote of Thanks given by Steve Argent, Chair of the MPG.
On behalf of all attendees and members of the MPG, we would like to formally record our thanks to Ian and Silan for an excellent Toby Norris Memorial Lecture.
Ian & Silan's lecture slides are available at https://communities.theiet.org/communities/files/154/16565