Last week students from UCL visited the National Grid’s Electricity National Control Centre as part of a trip organised by Dr Catalina Spataru, to complement the teaching in her modules BENVGSR7 Metrics, Modelling and Visualisation of the Resource Nexus and BENVGEES EDE Smart Energy Systems.
Students from the UCL Energy Institute, the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering and UCL Engineering took part on the visit, which was hosted by John Walsh and Phil Ashton, experts in electricity system operation and monitoring & control at National Grid.
The visit began with John & Phil explaining to students the different aspects of operations and innovation, educated the students on key aspects of National Grid’s Electricity System Operator role in ensuring real time system balance with a focus on energy and renewable forecasting, frequency control and the future scenarios and operating challenges as we move to a low carbon network.
Students had the opportunity to view the Control room and learnt about the system operator role of National Grid in ensure real time balancing of the power system and managing electricity flows across the GB network.
Students said they have enjoyed having the chance of going inside the control room, learning how things work behind the scenes and to hear about future challenges.
This visit is an important part of the teaching programme because it helps students to understand how things work in reality.