On 11th of April, The National HVDC Centre held a Kick off meeting for one of the Centre Sponsored research projects which is a tie-in with EPRI. EPRI is an independent research and development organisation that focuses on key development and innovation in the Electricity Sector (About EPRI). The meeting was attended by representatives of Scottish Power Future Network, National Grid ESO, SHE Transmission, EPRI and The National HVDC Centre. Key decisions on the scope, relevance, expectations, timelines and collaboration opportunities for this project were set during this meeting. Also, this particular project is of key interest to Scottish Power, SHE Transmission and National Grid teams as this project focuses on black start and weak grid effect on existing protection systems in the grid. The finding from this project would provide key inputs to National Grid, SPEN and SHET for their upcoming HVDC links.

There are plans to test various physical relays along with RTDS after the initial offline studies. This is one of the projects that focus on the strategy of the Centre to mitigate any risk that might occur during the integration and operation of existing and upcoming HVDC projects in the GB network.