Cast your mind back 20 years and the energy landscape in the UK looked very different to the way it does today.

Take solar power as an example. In 2006, total solar generation capacity in Britain was about 12MW – a tiny proportion of the total in Europe. Few would have envisaged that that capacity would hit 17GW in 2024.

The increase in British solar installations represents growth of 18,000% on 2010 levels. There’s more to come too, with 2,000 solar plants waiting to be constructed, versus about 1,300 in operation. This means the shape of energy networks will continue to change as new sources of power come online and demand soars for electricity for EV charging, heat pumps, and other decarbonised technologies.

SSEN recognised at the beginning of the decade that the energy transition would require an understanding of low-voltage networks that was quite simply lacking. "At present we have almost no visibility of consumption, generation and power quality on our Low Voltage (LV) networks," the network candidly stated in a 2021 engineering document.

"With the expected increase in decarbonised heating and transport connecting to our networks we will need to have improved visibility across many of these networks, and while there is the ability to utilise data from smart metering, it will not be possible to gather it in near real time due to a combination of Data Privacy and system issues."

The answer, SSEN said, would be to deploy LV network monitoring devices to provide internal and external stakeholders with the visibility needed to better use energy, assets and services. This would also have a bearing on the flex market, the network noted.

"As the flexibility services market matures and more customers are able to offer their services to both us and other parties to help manage issues and seize opportunities across the entire energy system (from generation down to LV network management), it is essential that granular data is made available to inform the decisions made in signalling, procuring, requesting and dispatching them."

In short, energy networks were changing – and with that came a requirement to understand them in much more detail.