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和可靠的能源供应，这使得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昂贵的工作：建设一个电网每公里线路的成本高达150万英镑--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，并有可能提高网络对极端天气事件等脆弱性的抵御能力。过去，电网只需要关注少数具有类似性能特征的发电机，而现在则需要连接数百万个较小的可再生发电机，这些发电机的能量输出变化很大，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长，使它们不再有效地适合目的。然而，长期以来一直有人认为，量子计算有可能比经典计算机更有效地回答这类优化问题。直到最近，人们才相信这在长期内是可能的（需要全尺寸量子硬件），但Phasecraft最近的创新改变了这种观点，表明即使在短期内，（当量子计算机被期望是小规模和嘈杂的）量子算法有可能超越经典算法。通过这个项目，我们将与能源安全部和净零合作，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并加速可再生能源的部署（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).