Quantum computing solutions for optimisation problems in Energy Grids

如今，大多数人和企业的日常活动都依赖于定期可靠的能源供应，这使得能源电网成为国家的关键基础设施。建设和维护电网连接是一项成本高昂的工作：建设电网的成本可能高达每公里150万GB--这些成本最终由纳税人或能源消费者承担。因此，能够确定网络基础设施的最佳布局可以显著节省成本，并潜在地提高网络对极端天气事件等漏洞的应变能力。以前，网络只需要集中在少数性能相似的发电机上，现在需要连接数百万台较小的可再生发电机，这些发电机的能量输出高度可变，而且往往不可预测。系统复杂性的增加意味着传统上用于确定电网布局的算法的运行时间呈指数级增加，使它们实际上不再适用。然而，长期以来，人们一直认为，量子计算有可能比传统计算机更有效地回答这类优化问题。直到最近，这只被认为在更长期内是可能的(需要全面的量子硬件)，但Phascrate最近的创新改变了这种观点，表明即使在短期内(预计量子计算机将是小规模和嘈杂的)，量子算法也有潜力超越经典算法。通过这个项目，我们将与能源安全部和Net Zero合作，确定与网络规划和优化相关的优先问题，然后我们将为这些问题构建量子软件解决方案。这将促进未来的网络规划和加快可再生能源的部署(这两个目标都是2023年早些时候发布的为英国供电战略中的关键目标)。

Nowadays, most people and businesses rely on a regular and reliable supply of energy for their day-to-day activities, making the energy grid a critical infrastructure for the country. Building and maintaining grid connections is a costly exercise: building an electric grid can cost up to £1.5m per km of line - costs that are ultimately borne by either the taxpayer or the energy consumer. Being able to determine the optimal layout for the network's infrastructure can therefore lead to significant cost savings, as well as potentially improving the network's resilience against vulnerabilities such as extreme weather events.The move towards Net Zero is also affecting the requirements on the power grid. Where once the network only needed to focus on a small number of generators with similar performance characteristics, it is now required to connect millions of smaller renewable generators, whose energy output is highly variable and often unpredictable.The increased complexity of the system translates into an exponential increase in the running time of the algorithms that have been traditionally used to determine the grid's layout, making them effectively no longer fit for purpose.It has long been suggested, though, that quantum computing has the potential to answer these sort of optimisation questions more efficiently than classical computers. Until recently, this was only believed possible in the longer term (requiring full-scale quantum hardware) but recent innovations by Phasecraft have changed this perspective, showing that even in the near term (when quantum computers are expected to be small-scale and noisy) there is the potential for quantum algorithms to outperform classical ones.With this project, we will work with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to identify the priority questions related to network planning and optimisation, and we will then build a quantum software solution to these problems. This will facilitate future network planning and accelerate the deployment of renewables (both key goals within the _Powering Up Britain_ strategy published earlier in 2023).