Funding Competition: Digital Twin Energy Grids – UK

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £1.2 million in innovation projects.

These will be for collaborative projects that enable digital twins, data interoperability and cyber resilience in the UK energy networks. This competition is part of the Building a Secure Resilient World programme (BSRW).

The aim of this competition is to improve the cyber resilience of the UK’s energy networks by enabling the development of digital twins.

Your project must:

• enable, support or deliver digital twins in energy networks
• improve the cyber resilience of the energy networks
• improve access to high quality and interoperable data in energy networks
• engage with end users in its development

Specific Themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• developing digital twins and their underpinning technologies
• enabling future federated digital twins
• system modelling for data driven decision making
• improving data interoperability, sharing, quality and security
• securing operational and control room technologies
• cybersecurity threat detection, analysis and mitigation
• data driven technologies for grid stability, forecasting, balancing
• demand side response security such as Energy Smart Appliances
• data sharing licensing and legal considerations

Project Size

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £100,000 and £300,000.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that:
  • are not in scope for this competition
  • do not have an application for cyber resilience of the energy grids
  • do not consider interoperability of data
  • are only applicable on gas networks

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last between 6 months and 12 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start by 1 October 2024
    • end by 30 September 2025
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
    • carry out its project in the UK and have an impact on the UK electricity network
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
    • licensed energy company or regulator
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.