Local Energy System Modelling: Osney Island Smart and Fair Neighbourhood Case Study

The Osney Bridge Street secondary substation feeds around 300 homes and half a dozen businesses on Osney Island. It is a typical example of a substation at the grid edge where both domestic and non-domestic customers are increasingly looking to connect Low Carbon Technologies (LCTs).

At the start of one of the place-based trials under Low Carbon Hub’s Smart and Fair Neighbourhood (SFN) projects called Osney Supercharge in January 2022 there were 16 existing PV systems installed and a couple of Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP) and EV chargers. The interest in the concept of increasing the level of renewable generation at the local level and looking to match the demand of residents to that local generation (including the existing community-owned Osney Lock Hydro 50kW scheme) meant that 30 of the 300 households expressed an interest in participating in the project within 2 weeks of the project being launched. SSEN’s Business as Usual (BaU) team raised concerns that there might be voltage rise issues on the Low voltage feeder that would prevent them giving permission for the householders to connect their PV systems to the grid.

Hence, the SSEN innovation team created a power system model for Osney Island to identify where these grid constraints might occur.