This competition is delivered by Innovate UK in partnership with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem). It is funded by the Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund, which aims to deliver net zero at lowest cost to consumers and support innovative businesses to grow and scale.
This competition is open to collaborative applications only, which must be led by an Ofgem licensee (gas/electricity distributor, transmission network, or system operator): if you are a third party innovator (e.g. business, academic, independent researcher) with a potentially relevant project, and would like to collaborate with an Ofgem licensee, please contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Energy team.
Discovery is the first phase of a four phase competition:
- Discovery
- Alpha
- Beta
- Deployment
There are five challenge areas in the Discovery Phase:
- Challenge 1: Industrial and business connection acceleration
- Challenge 2: Faster build and maintenance
- Challenge 3: Instant use domestic energy devices
- Challenge 4: Eliminating energy outages
- Challenge 5: Decentralised system balancing
Your Project must address one of the Innovation Challenges. You must plan for the development of your Project to meet an Innovation Challenge through to:
- live testing in the Alpha Phase (if invited to apply following Discovery)
- large-scale demonstration in the Beta Phase (if invited following Alpha)
- deployment of the proven solution into business as usual at the Deployment Phase (if invited following Beta)
It is the responsibility of the lead applicant to ensure that you are entering the appropriate Innovation Challenge for your Project. You will not be able to transfer your application, and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope. If you are unsure which challenge is appropriate, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Energy team for advice.
Any adoption and implementation of a solution from this competition would be subject to a separate, possibly competitive, procurement exercise.
-
To lead a Discovery Phase Project, you must:
- be an Ofgem licensed gas distribution network, gas transmission, electricity transmission, electricity distribution, or National Energy System Operator (NESO)
- work with at least one other organisation as a Project Partner
Project Partners
For this Competition, there are no specific Project partner requirements in addition to the lead network licensee.
You are encouraged to have other Project Partners. Your Project Partners can include a variety of third party innovators such as:
- start-ups
- SMEs
- suppliers
- academics
- independent researchers
- disruptors
- other licenced energy network companies
This list is not intended to be exhaustive.
-
Your Project must:
- have total eligible Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) requested funding of no more than £200,000, exclusive of VAT
- provide a minimum of 10% of total Project costs as a compulsory contribution from private funds
- start after 1 September 2026
- end by 31 January 2027
- be completed within the five month window
Your Project deliverables must be completed within the five month window stated.
If your Project is completing an initial Discovery phase to develop an Innovation Charter, you will not be subject to a minimum 10% Compulsory Contribution. No Compulsory Contribution will be required.
You are required to fulfil all monitoring requirements, for example, kick off meeting, end of phase meetings and Project show and tells; further guidance will be provided.
-
This competition is delivered by Innovate UK in partnership with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem). It is funded by the Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund, which aims to deliver net zero at lowest cost to consumers and support innovative businesses to grow and scale.
Each Innovation Challenge as listed in the Innovation Challenge document has different aims.
You must select which challenge your Project is working on.
- Challenge 1: Industrial and business connection acceleration
- Challenge 2: Faster build and maintenance
- Challenge 3: Instant use domestic energy devices
- Challenge 4: Eliminating energy outages
- Challenge 5: Decentralised system balancing
Your Project must meet the Eligibility Criteria of the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), as stipulated in the SIF Governance Document.
Applicants must demonstrate that the Projects deliver a net benefit to consumers through:
- financial cost reductions, for example, in operating the network, energy bills, users of network services
- emission reduction
- access to revenues for network users
- introducing new products, process and services to the UK energy market
Your proposal must focus on network innovation that can benefit GB energy network infrastructure, consumers, operation, and utilisation.
You must address:
- users and their context
- constraints affecting the problem or wider context
- opportunities for improvement
- environmental impacts
At this stage a Project Direction will be issued for the Discovery Phase only. Successful applicants will be invited to apply for Alpha Phase.
The Discovery Phase of a Project will define the problem and the value in solving it. It will also facilitate a common understanding of consumers’ and network users’ needs from the innovation and identifying constraints.
The Alpha Phase will focus on preparing and testing solutions that are identified during the Discovery Phase, ahead of any large-scale demonstration of the Project in the Beta Phase.
-
Innovation Challenge focus
Any proposed Project must consider how it contributes to these overarching objectives:
- Cost reduction: Drastically reducing whole life infrastructure costs and enhancing resilience aims to ensure affordability and unlock billions in economic savings and opportunity. New business models and service definitions will allow value to be better realised by customers
- Customer outcomes: Radically simpler engagement with networks to connect assets, and significantly higher resilience, meet the needs of customers from households to major sites
- Economic growth: Accelerating connections across vectors and asset scales, and minimising the disruption caused by infrastructure works, will streamline expansion of energy intensive sites and uptake of new technology by consumers
- Decarbonisation: Reshaping the architecture of system operations is a prerequisite for the rapid connection of tens of millions of smart, flexible decarbonised demand assets. Time and cost efficiency of infrastructure deployment allow the networks to support new clean energy resources to come on stream
-
If you are a third party innovator (e.g. business, academic, independent researcher) with a potentially relevant project, and/or would like to collaborate with an Ofgem licensee, please contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Energy team.
For eligibility queries, contact SIF_Ofgem@iuk.ukri.org at least five working days before the competition closes. For other queries, email support@iuk.ukri.org.