Hotter and Hotter: Why Electricity Networks Are Becoming More Complex

Picture the scene. You’re sitting in the garden enjoying one of Britain’s increasingly frequent heatwaves, wondering whether England might finally bring “it” home, whether Arthur Fery can produce a Wimbledon fairy tale, and casually catching up on the news. Then you spot the headline: the National Energy System Operator (NESO) warns that extreme high temperatures could threaten UK electricity supplies.

Surely on a blazing hot day, with solar farms working flat out, electricity should be abundant? The reality is far more complicated.

During recent periods of extreme heat, NESO asked electricity generators to provide additional capacity as demand increased. The challenge isn’t financial margins — it’s balancing electricity supply and demand every second of every day. NESO deserves enormous credit for keeping Britain’s electricity system balanced in increasingly challenging conditions.

Today’s network is no longer simply delivering electricity from large power stations to consumers. It is becoming a dynamic ecosystem of electric vehicles, heat pumps, battery storage, embedded generation, flexible demand and smart homes. Every one of these adds another layer of assets to an already complex network.

Living in the Cotswolds provides some wonderful examples. It’s not unusual to see a Tesla parked outside a beautifully renovated cottage with solar panels covering the roof… while inside an Aga quietly burns fuel twenty-four hours a day because, well, that’s what Agas have always done, designed to feed a large family and agricultural workers. Technology moves quickly. Human habits perhaps not quite so fast.

Meanwhile, improvements to the UK’s housing insulation continue to lag behind many European countries. As our summers become hotter, cooling homes will inevitably become a larger part of electricity demand. As Jim Skea, Chair of the IPCC, has observed, it is now almost inevitable that global warming will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the imminent future.

Artificial Intelligence introduces another significant challenge. Large Language Models and the data centres that support them consume enormous amounts of electricity. Ironically, one of the technologies that may help optimise our electricity networks also increases demand upon them.

Utilities also face another challenge: data. Asset records, customer information, GIS, regulatory reporting, safety systems, work management, Operational Technology (OT) and SCADA frequently sit in separate systems, often built up over decades through mergers and acquisitions. Without creating insight across data stores, organisations will struggle to build the complete picture needed to make faster, better-informed decisions. This is precisely the kind of problem Apexon’s Data, Analytics and AI practice spends its time on — connecting legacy and cloud environments so that data becomes AI-ready, rather than simply abundant.

As temperatures continue to rise, electricity demand will grow. As transport electrifies, demand will grow. As heating electrifies, demand will grow. As AI expands, demand will grow. The balancing act performed by NESO will only become more complex.

This series explores how Artificial Intelligence, engineering expertise and connected data can help electricity organisations move beyond impressive demonstrations towards practical solutions that deliver measurable business value and better customer outcomes.

Questions, comments or different perspectives are always welcome. At Apexon we enjoy working alongside our clients to solve real operational challenges — whether that’s real-time visibility across energy assets or turning fragmented OT and IT data into a single, trustworthy picture — building AI solutions that create measurable value, not simply impressive demonstrations.

PS: A huge shout-out to the SSEN field engineers who yesterday restored power to our village after an ill-advised garden bonfire threatened a pole-mounted transformer, resulting in SSEN cutting power so the Fire Brigade could tackle the blaze — all during Wimbledon. While one rather embarrassed merchant banker quietly retreated to his London residence, the engineers simply got on with the job in sweltering conditions, wearing very wintry PPE and the “jewellery” of pole climbing. Sometimes the people keeping the lights on don’t receive the recognition they deserve. The village WhatsApp chatter about how marvellous the Fire Brigade and SSEN team were was off the scale. All down to one gentleman wishing to tidy up his garden.

Coming Next…

This heatwave may have triggered the headlines, but it also exposed something much bigger. Today’s electricity network is no longer simply a collection of power stations, substations and overhead lines. It’s an interconnected ecosystem where customer behaviour, electric vehicles, heat pumps, renewable generation, battery storage, AI, climate change and even geopolitical events all influence one another.

In Blog 2 — ‘Everything Is Connected: Why the Modern Electricity Network Is No Longer Just a Grid’ — we’ll explore why understanding those connections is becoming essential for everyone involved in planning, operating and investing in the network.