Imperial experts in global effort to speed up energy system transition

Leading power system operators have teamed up and joined forces with research institutions including Imperial to accelerate the energy transition.

Launched this week, the Global Power System Transformation Consortium (G-PST) aims to enable the integration of clean energy into power systems at an unprecedented scope and scale, contributing to a 50% reduction in emissions of all pollutants over the next ten years.

The CEOs of six of the world’s leading power system operators - the Australia Energy Market Operator (AEMO), Great Britain’s National Grid ESO, the California Independent System Operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Ireland’s EirGrid, and Denmark’s Energinet – are leading the consortium.

“Countries around the world are looking to pursue a path to modern, low-emissions energy systems, but face significant challenges in acquiring and applying the technical knowledge needed to operate and plan rapidly transforming power systems,” said Audrey Zibelman, CEO of AEMO.

The launch of G-PST is a thrill for us at Imperial because we have been working toward this point for more than a year Professor Tim Green Co-Director, Energy Futures Lab

“This consortium will help meet this need by engaging key power system operators, applied research and educational institutions, governments, businesses, and stakeholders from developed and developing countries to accelerate clean energy transitions at the ambitious scope and scale that is required.”

The founding system operators are partnering with more than 25 prominent system operators from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other regions as well as renowned research and educational institutions to help realise G-PST’s ambition.

Experts from Imperial College London form part of the consortium’s core technical team, which also includes the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the ASEAN Center for Energy (ACE), among others.

“The launch of G-PST is a thrill for us at Imperial because we have been working toward this point for more than a year”, said Professor Tim Green, Professor of Electrical Power Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Co-Director of Energy Futures Lab, Imperial’s energy institute. 

“We have been helping to shape G-PST’s research agenda through a series of discussions with colleagues around the world, in particular exploring how the new reliance on inverter-based resources challenges some of the core ideas that have been used in the past to operate power systems and compels us to look for new control and optimisation approaches.”

Imperial College is also leading the consortium’s initiative on workforce development, which will see power system academics collaborating on a new university curriculum and developing upskilling programmes for system operator staff.

It’s hoped the consortium’s collaborative approach and global ambition will ensure that energy system innovations are shared quickly and widely, enabling their rapid application throughout the world.

Key sponsors and partners of the G-PST Consortium include Wellspring Climate Initiative, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), BMWi (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, Germany) and Energy Innovation.

For additional information on the G-PST, please visit https://globalpst.org/.