We must fix the energy grid - but think bigger than simply adding costs

While this new infrastructure is a vital step toward our electric future, it also comes with a cost, adding over £100 to energy bills over the next five years.

This may not seem like an enormous amount, but it lands on top of already elevated energy costs driven by increased demand and supply shocks like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Pair this with a further increase when the energy price cap rises during the coldest months of the year, and it paints a pretty bleak picture.

Strengthening electricity infrastructure to deliver a safe and stable supply is obviously crucial, but it can’t be the end of the conversation. If we approach this intelligently, we have the technology and the tools to improve and even revolutionise our grid, while at the same time passing tangible savings onto the consumer in a timely manner.

So much of the conversation around how to handle energy demand — especially when it comes to emerging industries like data centres — focuses on new sources of energy.

The reality is that we need to build new generation and infrastructure to meet this rapidly growing demand, but we should also harness the resources we already have to help keep costs down and strengthen the grid.

Accessing this untapped resource requires us to step out from the shadow of orthodoxy and embrace the future.

Let me explain: in the UK, there is a growing constituency of homes that have smart energy infrastructure or some kind of personal energy-generating system like solar panels, heat pumps, EVs or home batteries.

The adoption of these technologies has been spurred by rising energy costs and enterprising homeowners looking to save.

Through the right software, these small-scale devices can operate together as a flexible fleet of distributed energy resources, which can not only generate electricity but regulate and allocate it to make it as efficient as possible, while helping the grid balance itself in real time.

Like so many other logistical systems in our modern world — like food supply chains — new technology is exposing staggering inefficiencies in a system that effectively runs on legacy software and pen and paper.

Through the use of smarter technology, what’s possible is for homes to help the grid respond dynamically to peaks and troughs in demand. We’d be adding more renewable energy to the grid while reducing pressure on it.

It also provides a solution that is effectively instant when compared to the time it takes to build a power plant. As we’ve seen from the slew of investments in AI in the UK, the development of the technology and the infrastructure around it is moving at lightning speed.

Therefore, solutions to meeting its demand must move at the same pace.

The cost of energy is on the minds of everyone in the country. What stands in front of us is both a potential crisis and an enormous opportunity.

Continuing to treat the grid as just a one-way, old-school generator means even higher bills and a system that struggles to keep the lights on, especially as AI continues to grow. But if we have the vision to grasp the opportunity in front of us, we can empower households to strengthen the country’s energy capacity, increase supply and lower bills.

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Chris Bernkopf is CEO and co-founder of Podero, an energy management platform

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

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