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Innovation

Innovation is critical to helping us meet the challenges of transitioning to a zero carbon future. As we sit at the very heart of the energy system, we play a central role in overcoming these challenges.

We know innovators across Great Britain are committed to solving the toughest problems we face as an industry, which is why we are here to work together to enable change. Given our unique position, we will facilitate innovation across the whole energy system. 

Everything we do at NESO goes beyond the past and present, into the future of the energy system. We are challenging the status quo, improving on it, and providing a different perspective as an independent public organisation. 

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Open Call Submissions

Whether you're a new startup, a scaling business, or an imaginative thinker, we want to hear your innovative ideas that push boundaries and reshape the way we think about what’s possible to achieve a secure, affordable and zero carbon future for GB.

Hear our Head of AI, Innovation and Sector Digitalisation, Carolina Tortora and Minal Sthankiya, Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) Portfolio Lead, outline our innovation call for ideas and how you can get involved. 

Please submit your idea through our Big Ideas form button below by 24 December. 

Submit a proposal

Submit your idea

Innovating to create value

Our innovative approach is already creating value, as these examples show:

  • Accelerating the energy transition: We are applying transformational technologies to radically improve our analysis and forecasting, unlock more efficient operations, and support faster and more informed decision-making, all to further reduce system costs.
  • Future markets to accelerate progress: Our coherent whole energy market strategy allows us to continually and collaboratively design and test market reforms so we can accelerate the energy transition and stimulate market competition.
  • Improving constraint management: We are testing a range of approaches to economically mitigating limits on the amount of power that equipment can transmit.
  • Examining system stability and resilience: Through knowledge and data sharing, we have improved our understanding of how and why the system may be affected by different factors, helping us reduce the impacts of increasing system complexity.

Innovation projects

We have a portfolio of active innovation projects funded by the Network Innovation Allowance (NIA), Network Innovation Competition (NIC), Ofgem's Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) and other research and development funds.

Distributed ReStart

Here you can find out about the Distributed ReStart project. Learn about the project’s benefits, its partners, and the workstreams that delivered its outputs.

Virtual Energy System

In 2021 ESO launched an ambitious, industry-wide mission to digitise our energy system. We call it the Virtual Energy System.

Crowdflex

CrowdFlex explores how domestic flexibility can be used in grid operations while empowering consumers to be active players in reducing their energy bills via new tariffs and incentives.

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Artificial Intelligence and NESO

Here at NESO we embrace artificial intelligence across our entire organisation, with a view to openly collaborating with all industry participants. As we start to operationalise our AI models and research, we are looking forward to working with industry to capitalise on the latest technologies to invite collaboration and interoperability across GB energy and beyond.

Are you researching cutting edge applications or looking to find out more about what we are working on? Reach out to us at [email protected] or if you’ve got a world leading AI project idea and want to bring it to life, submit your idea and let’s get started!

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