Olsights joins SSEN Transmission and research partners to explore new approaches to long-term electricity network planning
Olsights is collaborating with SSEN Transmission, the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and MapStand on STRATOS (Strategic Transition Analysis & Testing of Operational Systems), a new innovation project exploring how advanced modelling and interactive visualisation could support smarter, more informed long-term electricity transmission planning.
As Great Britain accelerates its transition to a cleaner, more electrified energy system, planning the electricity transmission network is becoming increasingly complex. Decisions about future infrastructure must be made years in advance, often against a backdrop of changing investment priorities, government policy, technology costs and electricity demand.
STRATOS will investigate how agent-based modelling (ABM), combined with interactive visualisation, could help network planners better understand the relationships, behaviours and uncertainties shaping the future electricity system.
Turning complex modelling into practical planning intelligence
Olsights is playing a key role in the project’s discovery and visual prototyping activities, drawing on its expertise in connected energy intelligence, geospatial analytics and user-centred digital solutions.
The company’s focus will be on bridging the gap between advanced modelling and real-world planning challenges, exploring how complex information can be translated into accessible, interactive tools that support practical decision-making.
At the heart of STRATOS is agent-based modelling, an approach that represents how different organisations and market participants make decisions, respond to changing circumstances and interact with one another.
Unlike conventional scenario-based approaches, which typically rely on predefined assumptions, agent-based modelling can explore how these individual decisions and behaviours interact to influence the development of the electricity system over time.
Olsights will investigate how these interactions and their potential outcomes could be presented through intuitive digital interfaces, enabling network planners to explore alternative development pathways, understand critical dependencies and identify emerging risks and opportunities.
The work builds on Olsights’ previous successful collaboration with SSEN Transmission on REACT (Rapid Evaluation Areal Connection Tool), an innovation project that demonstrated how interactive geospatial intelligence can support earlier, more informed decisions about electricity network connections, capacity and development opportunities.
While REACT focused on early-stage connections planning, STRATOS takes a broader, longer-term perspective, exploring the behaviours, interactions and uncertainties that influence future transmission infrastructure requirements.
The initial phase will focus on identifying priority planning use cases, understanding data and modelling requirements, and developing early interactive prototypes to demonstrate where this approach could add value to existing planning processes.
Bringing together complementary expertise
STRATOS brings together four organisations with complementary expertise across electricity networks, economic and behavioural modelling, energy infrastructure data and digital innovation.
Led by SSEN Transmission, the project is grounded in real-world transmission planning challenges, ensuring that the research remains focused on practical industry needs and the decisions facing network planners.
The University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment brings specialist expertise in agent-based modelling, economics and complex systems, exploring how the behaviours and interactions of different energy-system participants can be represented.
MapStand brings expertise in energy infrastructure data and geospatial analysis, helping establish the spatial context needed to understand the relationships between infrastructure, development activity and future network requirements.
Olsights contributes its experience in visual decision intelligence, energy-system data integration, user-centred discovery and rapid interactive prototyping, helping translate advanced research into practical planning applications.
Together, the partners will explore how these complementary capabilities can provide a more connected understanding of the factors influencing future electricity network development.
Supporting better decisions for the energy transition
The growth of renewable generation, energy storage, electrification of transport and heat, and new industrial demand is creating significant challenges for long-term electricity infrastructure planning.
Future network requirements will increasingly depend not only on changing energy demand and technology, but also on the decisions and behaviours of multiple organisations and market participants.
By investigating how these factors interact and evolve, STRATOS aims to establish whether agent-based modelling can complement existing planning methods and provide valuable additional insight before major infrastructure investment decisions are made.
For Olsights, the project represents a natural progression of its work in electricity network innovation and its wider mission to accelerate the energy transition through connected intelligence.
Through STRATOS, Olsights continues to explore how complex energy systems can be made easier to visualise, analyse and understand, helping turn advanced research and interconnected data into practical intelligence for better-informed decisions.
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