UK Grid Flex & Electrification Simulator

UK Grid Flex & Electrification Simulator: User Guide

1. Overview & Purpose

The UK Grid Flex & Electrification Simulator is an interactive, browser-based dashboard that models the 24-hour aggregate electrical load across Great Britain. It allows you to explore how progressive electrification (heat pumps and electric vehicles) interacts with intermittent renewables (wind and solar), firm baseload generation (nuclear), and combined energy storage (residential batteries and utility-scale grid batteries).

2. Interface Breakdown

The top metric cards update dynamically as sliders are adjusted:

• Gross Peak Demand (Red): The maximum hourly demand on the system before any generation or storage offsets are applied.
• Net Grid Peak (Amber): The residual peak demand that traditional grid infrastructure and centralized generators must supply after renewable generation and combined battery dispatch.
• Total Storage Fleet (Blue): The total installed energy capacity across Great Britain (in GWh), combining both home batteries and grid-scale storage.
• Peak Base/Clean Gen (Green): The peak aggregate output across rooftop Solar, grid Solar Farms, Wind, and Nuclear sources.

3. Simulator Controls & Parameters

Seasonal Modes

Select a season to alter baseline electrical demand and generation availability:

Season	Base Demand Profile	Solar Availability	Wind Capacity Factor	Heat Pump Load Factor
❄️ Winter	Highest (cold evenings, high lighting)	Low (short daylight, low sun angle)	High (85% baseline factor)	High (1.8× space heating multiplier)
🌱 Spring	Moderate	Moderate-High	Moderate (60% baseline factor)	Moderate (0.9× multiplier)
☀️ Summer	Lowest	Maximum (extended daylight & intensity)	Low (40% baseline factor)	Minimal (0.2× domestic hot water only)
🍂 Autumn	Moderate-High	Moderate	High (78% baseline factor)	Moderate-High (1.2× multiplier)

Interactive Sliders

• 10kWh Home Batteries (0 – 29 Million Homes): Scales decentralized home energy storage. 1 million homes = 10 GWh of storage.
• Grid-Scale Battery Storage (0 – 150 GWh): Simulates utility-scale lithium-ion (or similar) battery energy storage systems (BESS). This is mathematically pooled with home batteries to model total grid arbitrage: charging during low-demand/high-solar windows (00:00–04:00 and 11:00–14:00) and discharging during peak evening hours (16:00–20:00).
• Domestic Solar PV (0 – 20 Million Homes): Models rooftop solar arrays (assuming an average 4 kWp installation per home). 1 million homes = 4 GW of peak potential capacity, dynamically derated by seasonal irradiance.
• Solar Farms (Grid-Scale) (0 – 80 GW): Models utility-scale solar photovoltaic plants directly injecting into the transmission network, mirroring the same seasonal irradiance curves as domestic solar.
• Heat Pumps Installed (0 – 25 Million Homes): Introduces heating and hot-water electricity demand characterized by morning (06:00–08:00) and evening (17:00–19:00) heating spikes, weighted heavily by seasonal temperature.
• Electric Vehicles (0 – 30 Million Vehicles): Adds transport electrification demand utilizing smart/overnight charging curves (22:00–04:00) with minor daytime opportunity charging.
• Wind Fleet Baseline Capacity (0 – 50 GW): Simulates grid-scale onshore and offshore wind generation applying seasonal capacity factors and diurnal variations.
• Nuclear Baseload Capacity (0 – 24 GW): Models continuous, non-dispatchable, 24/7 low-carbon baseload electricity generation.

4. Reading the Chart

• Dashed Red Line (Gross Demand): Total unmanaged demand across all homes, heat pumps, and electric vehicles.
• Solid Green Line / Area (Clean Generation): Total instantaneous clean generation from rooftop/utility Solar, Wind, and Nuclear.
• Solid Blue Line / Area (Net Grid Demand): The residual load profile the National Grid must balance after clean generation offsets and bulk battery charging/discharging cycles take effect.

5. Key Exploratory Scenarios to Try

• Winter Peak Stress Test: Select Winter, set Heat Pumps to 15M, and leave all generation and storage at 0. Observe how gross peak demand spikes.
• Peak Shaving via Storage: Keep the winter peak scenario, but ramp up Grid-Scale Battery Storage to 100 GWh to observe how the evening peak (blue line) flattens completely.
• Summer Solar Duck Curve: Select Summer, increase Solar Farms to 50 GW, and observe the steep midday dip in net grid demand, visualizing the over-generation risk where bulk storage becomes necessary.