The Second Tier of the LCN Fund provides total funding of up to £320m over the five years of the Electricity Distribution Price Control Review 5 (DPCR5) for large projects. Ofgem will hold an annual competition for project funding and Distributed Network Operators (DNOs) will compete against each other for an allocation of annual £64m of funding available.
2011 Competition
The process for Second Tier of the Fund in 2011 is complete. The competition received six applications in 2011. All of the submission materials for each project are available below. These include the proforma, appendices, consultants report, and a zip folder containing a question log and non-confidential answers to questions. The following projects have been awarded funding:
- Flexible Plug and Play (submitted by UK Power Networks)
- B.R.I.S.T.O.L. (submitted by Western Power Distribution)
- Thames Valley Vision 2 (submitted by Scottish and Southern Energy)
- Capacity to Customers (submitted by Electricity North West)
- Flexible Networks for a Low Carbon Future (submitted by Scottish Power Energy Networks)
- FALCON (submitted by Western Power Distribution)
2010 Competition
We awarded LCN Funding to the following projects under the first Second Tier of the annual competition:
- Customer-led Network Revolution (submitted by CE Electric UK)
- Low Carbon London (submitted by EDF Energy Networks - now UK Power Networks)
- Low Carbon Hub (submitted by Central Networks)
- LV Network Templates for a low carbon future (submitted by Western Power Distribution)
These projects will address a broad range of issues which are relevant to the challenges that the network operators will need to address in the move to the low carbon economy. These include trials to assess the impact on the networks of electric vehicles and wind and solar generation; how best to provide timely and efficient connection to renewable generation; the role that demand side response can play in future network operation and the extent to which time of use tariffs are successful in changing consumption patterns. These projects can provide learning which will be beneficial across networks.
The winning DNOs are required to report on project progress every 6 months. We will be monitoring these reports to understand the learning which is emerging and to ensure that it is being disseminated in the ways outlined in the project submission. The project submissions and all the associated appendices can be found below.