Conductor

The UK’s rail network pulls huge surges of electricity from the grid at peak times, but the expensive high-capacity connections that supply that power sit mostly idle the rest of the day. This matters because those connections—called Traction Bulk Supply Points—are built to handle short, intense bursts of demand, not steady use. That mismatch wastes capacity that could otherwise serve nearby homes, businesses, or renewable generators. At the same time, grid operators struggle to balance supply and demand in areas where the network is constrained, and renewable projects are sometimes curtailed—switched off—because there is nowhere to send the power they generate. The Conductor project proposes installing battery storage at these rail supply points and rewriting connection agreements to allow two-way power flow. Batteries would charge during off-peak periods and discharge to meet train demand when it spikes, shifting the load away from peak grid times. That freed capacity could then be sold to other grid users, used to provide local flexibility services, or opened up to new renewable generation that would otherwise be curtailed. If it works, the approach could turn a single-purpose, underused piece of rail infrastructure into a multi-use grid asset—without building new power lines.