Case Study: DSO Vision and Strategy for a Distribution Network Operator in the UK

We supported the client in defining the vision and developing the strategy for transitioning to a DSO model. Specifically, our approach consisted of the following key steps:

• To research national and international best practices and trends on DSO transition programmes, assess their relevance and applicability to the client and extract relevant lessons learned.
• To carry out interviews and workshop activities with client’s stakeholders (i.e. senior staff from strategy and operation teams) to identify the aspirations, level of change, boundaries and desired end-state of the DSO.
• To combine the relevant lessons learned from our research activities with the aspirations, boundaries and desired end-state of the DSO role from our interview/workshop activities to develop the most appropriate DSO model option.
• To use an SGAM approach focussed on the business and function layers to develop the selected DSO model with respect to its current and new actors, new and extended roles and responsibilities, functional requirements, interoperability requirements across the two layers, and technology, commercial, regulatory, customer and market considerations required for the physical implementation of the model.
• To compare and assess the current ‘as is’ state of the client, with respect to the identified DSO functional requirements, to the desired ‘to be’ DSO state to evidence the physical DSO transition initiatives that need to be undertaken to facilitate the implementation of the DSO vision into Business as Usual.
• To develop a gap analysis between the current ‘as is’ and desired ‘to be’ DSO states to ascertain the levels of priority of the physical DSO transition initiatives.