For the third year in a row, Advanced Infrastructure has been honoured at the British Renewable Energy Awards, this time winning the coveted Smart Energy System Award for 2025. This follows back-to-back victories in 2023 and 2024 in the Accelerating to Net Zero category, making Advanced Infrastructure one of the few organisations to be recognised across multiple categories in consecutive years.

The 2025 Smart Energy System Award celebrates systems that support the deployment of renewable energy and clean technologies while enhancing consumer value and accelerating progress toward Net Zero. Advanced Infrastructure’s Local Area Energy Planner Plus Platform (LAEP+), was the standout winner for its deep technical capabilities, national deployment, and tangible impact on decarbonisation efforts.

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Powering Local Net Zero: The LAEP+ Platform

LAEP+ is a spatial analytics and digital twin platform designed to accelerate Local Area Energy Planning for local authorities and improve strategic network planning for utilities. Since 2021, the platform has:

• Been deployed across 200 local authorities
  
• Been adopted by 4 of the 6 UK Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) including Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and UK Power Networks.
• Enabled the evidence base for major government funding applications such as LEVI and Solar Together for Rooftop Solar PV and EV Charge Points.

LAEP+ uses digital twins to support decision making by local stakeholders and forecasts network capacity, building retrofits, heat networks, and EV rollouts all in one platform. Hundreds of API integrations ensure that all decisions are made on the latest, building stock, sociodemographic and energy network data.

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From Local Tools to Regional Transformation

In 2024 Scottish and Southern Electricity Network (SSEN) partnered with Advanced Infrastructure to deliver a Net Zero Accelerator Tool built upon Advanced Infrastructure’s LAEP+ platform. The platform developed named LENZA (Local Energy Net Zero Accelerator) - is driving forward data access, modelling and collaboration in Local Net Zero planning across 58 local authorities in England and Scotland.

The LENZA tool has facilitated the co-creation of local decarbonisation pathways, with phased rollouts across all local authorities within SSEN licence areas taken place throughout 2024.

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Unlocking Faster Grid Connections across Ireland with the LAEP+ Self-Serve Connections Portal

In the same year Advanced Infrastructure was selected by ESB Networks, Ireland's Distribution System Operator (DSO) to provide local authorities, electric vehicle charge-point developers and other medium voltage demand customers with an online screening tool to self-assess their demand connection requirements against available network capacity, estimated connection timeline and cost information, thereby enabling them to refine their connection requirements in advance of any formal connection applications.

In this way the volume of applications requiring processing and analysis by ESB Networks can, over time, be rightsized by applicant customers to those most likely to result in connections to the electricity network. 

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Enhancing Grid Forecasting with the LAEP+ Customer Planning Portal

Throughout 2023-2024 Advanced Infrastructure also developed a Digital Local Area Energy Planning Tool (Your Local Net Zero Hub) for UK Power Networks (UKPN), built on Advanced Infrastructure’s LAEP+ platform. The tool is supporting over 130 local authorities in the development of Local Area Energy plans (LAEPs), boosting not only the rollout of renewable technologies but additionally helping UKPN better forecast and plan for network enhancements.

Advanced Infrastructure has proven that digital infrastructure is as vital as physical infrastructure in the Net Zero transition. As the UK’s climate goals move from ambition to action, LAEP+ is rapidly becoming the backbone of local decarbonisation planning—linking stakeholders, data, and strategy to deliver results.

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Book your Free LAEP+ Demo with Advanced Infrastructure and learn how LAEP+ can improve strategic network planning for utilities and accelerate local energy planning.