Project staff and support

Jack Grahl (Intern, University College London)
Paul Plumptre (Company Supervisor, National Grid)
Marianna Csörnyei (Academic Mentor, University College London)
Lorcan Mac Manus (Technology Translator, Industrial Mathematics KTN)

This Internship project was carried out at National Grid, in conjunction with University College London. It is part of the KTN's Industrial Mathematics Internships Programme, co-funded by EPSRC. Start date: June 2009; duration: 3 months.

Project description

The end intention was to identify the distribution of the contribution of windpower to the flow of electricity from one part of Great Britain to the remainder of Great Britain, i.e. across a transmission boundary, for example from Scotland to England. The 90% or the 95% point of this distribution determines the quantity of transmission boundary capability, that National Grid must build, to comply with the security requirements of our Transmission Licence.

To achieve this, one must identify the anti-correlation of windpower output from the Scottish wind fleet and the English windfleet; i.e. the joint likelihood that there is a high level of wind output in Scotland and a low level of wind output in England.

Outcomes and benefits of the Internship

"This was an exciting opportunity to make the connections between probability theory and the practice of statistics in business decision-making," said Jack Grahl, University College London.

"The project has applied some respectable statistics to the correlations of windfarm outputs, on top of the amateur methods previously attempted. We now better understand the anti-correlation of windfarms outputs," said Paul Plumptre, the industrial supervisor at National Grid.