Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund round 5 Discovery C6

Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund round 5 Discovery C6

This opportunity is closed. Innovate UK’s official UKRI listing records the Round 5 Discovery C6 competition as a grant opportunity delivered with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem). The Innovation Funding Service (IFS) brief says the competition is now closed, with an opening date of 27 May 2026 and a closing deadline of 24 June 2026 at 11:00 am UK time. This page keeps that completed round’s real deadline for reference; it is not a live invitation to submit.

The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) programme continues beyond this individual call. Ofgem’s programme page lists later funding cycles, including Cycle 7 from 22 September to 22 October 2026 and Cycle 8 from 25 January to 24 February 2027. Those programme-level dates do not turn this Round 5 Discovery listing into an open application or establish that the same Discovery competition will repeat. Anyone preparing a future SIF application should use the new cycle’s own IFS brief and check its phase, challenge, amount, eligibility, and deadline.

At a glance

What the call was for

The call funded the Discovery phase of a four-phase SIF pathway: Discovery, Alpha, Beta, and Deployment. Discovery was intended to define the problem, establish the value of solving it, and develop a common understanding of the needs and constraints affecting consumers and network users. The IFS brief says successful Discovery applicants would be invited to apply for the Alpha phase, where solutions identified during Discovery could be prepared and tested. That invitation did not mean that Alpha funding was automatic; a further assessment was required.

The competition focused on innovation that could benefit Great Britain’s energy-network infrastructure, consumers, network operation, and network utilisation. A proposal needed to connect its technical work to a concrete network problem and explain the consumer or whole-system value expected from solving it. The official brief identifies possible benefits such as lower network or energy costs, emissions reduction, access to revenues for network users, and new or improved products, processes, and services in the UK energy market.

Round 5 contained seven Innovation Challenges:

1. Advanced energy transmission and networks
2. Dynamic modelling
3. High energy demand point integration
4. Consumer centric grid expansion
5. Enhanced system visibility and control
6. Green gas
7. Whole system optimisation

An applicant had to select the appropriate challenge and aim for its project. The IFS brief warned that an application could not be transferred to another challenge and would not be assessed if it was out of scope. The work also had to consider cross-cutting SIF concerns: customer focus, scalability and replicability, data and digitalisation, shared learning, skills and capability, supply chains, and resilience. Those were not decorative themes. They shaped whether a project could plausibly move from a defined Discovery problem toward later testing and possible adoption.

Funding and project limits

The completed competition made up to £30 million available across the Discovery phase and the seven Round 5 challenges. That was a portfolio allocation, not a guaranteed award for every applicant or a promise that every project could request an equal share. A project’s total requested SIF funding could not exceed £200,000, exclusive of VAT. The application also had to show a compulsory private-funds contribution of at least 10% of total project costs. The IFS guidance says contributions above that minimum could be assessed as better value for money, but a larger match did not remove the need to meet the other eligibility criteria.

The award was designed on a no-subsidy basis as defined by the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Innovate UK would determine the position after submission, and the lead organisation remained responsible for keeping its collaborators compliant with the relevant status. A team considering this kind of call needed independent legal advice if it was unsure how subsidy control, the Windsor Framework, or the activity of a particular organisation affected eligibility. Those issues could not be solved by describing a project as “research” in the application.

The delivery window was deliberately short. Projects had to start after 1 September 2026, end by 31 January 2027, and complete the Discovery deliverables within five months. The official timetable listed applicant notifications for 22 July 2026, Project Direction issuance for 20 August 2026, and project start after 1 September 2026. These dates describe the completed call’s planned administration, not a new deadline for applications. A future SIF cycle may use different dates and should be read on its own terms.

Who could lead and who needed to be involved

The competition was for collaborations only. The lead had to be an Ofgem-licensed electricity or gas distribution network, a transmission operator, or the Electricity System Operator. Ofgem’s application guidance says that, when applying as a partnership, the energy licence holder submits the application. The IFS question set then required the applicant to identify the Lead Network, which was the funding recipient for the application.

The IFS brief provided a defined list of eligible network organisations, including licensed distribution and transmission companies and the National Energy System Operator. A prospective partner could not assume that an unlicensed technology company, university, consultancy, or supplier could act as the lead merely because it owned the proposed technology. Such organisations could be part of the project team where their role, capability, facilities, or stakeholder connection supported the work, but the lead-network rule still applied.

The collaboration had to be substantive. The application asked why each project partner and subcontractor had been chosen, what skills and experience each would bring, which resources and facilities were needed, and how external parties, network users, or consumers would be engaged. It also asked how partners represented end-customer needs and how business-as-usual teams would help shape the project. A list of names without defined responsibilities would not answer those questions.

The project also had to address the SIF Governance Document. Each partner was responsible for reading that document, and the lead had to ensure that all assigned sections were complete and that partners had accepted the terms and conditions before submission. The governance document covered eligibility, application and assessment, project delivery and monitoring, funding arrangements, compliance and audits, intellectual property, royalties, learning, collaboration, and reporting.

What the archived application required

The IFS application was divided into three sections: Project details, Application questions, and Finances. The following is the accurate workflow for the completed competition, retained so that a future applicant or reviewer can understand what the round required.

1. Assemble the application team

The lead network first decided which organisations would work on the project and invited people from those organisations into the IFS application. The lead then selected the Lead Network, entered the project title, proposed start date and duration, and wrote a public one-line description of up to 30 words plus a public project description of up to 100 words. Public text had to avoid commercially sensitive information because it could be published if the project received funding.

The team selected one Round 5 Innovation Challenge and its relevant aim or focus area. The proposal had to describe the problem, the intended users, the constraints, the opportunity for improvement, and the environmental impacts. It also needed to explain how the Discovery work could contribute to a useful next phase rather than presenting an unbounded development programme.

2. Complete the application questions

The IFS brief required every question to be answered. Each answer could be up to 400 words, and applicants were told not to include website addresses or other URLs in answers unless a question requested one. The questions covered the Lead Network, animal testing, international collaboration, export licences, Trusted Research and Innovation, the problem statement, portfolio integration and strategic alignment, and the project team.

Later questions covered National Energy System Operator involvement, project management and delivery, key outputs and dissemination, intellectual property rights, and value for money. The problem statement had to explain how the solution had developed, who was affected, why the problem mattered, how the work aligned to the selected Innovation Challenge, and how the team understood user needs. The team question required roles, skills, resources, stakeholder involvement, and customer engagement rather than a generic consortium description.

Question 14 required a Project Management Template. The team had to describe work packages, objectives, tasks, milestones, deliverables, ownership, funding allocation, and stage-gate success criteria. It also had to provide a risk register covering technical, political, policy, regulatory, supply, commercial, managerial, and environmental risks, with mitigation actions and ownership. A Gantt chart had to be included as a separate tab in the project-management workbook. The completed template had to be uploaded as an Excel file within the stated file-size and legibility rules.

The key-outputs question required a clear description of what the team expected to achieve by the end of Discovery, who owned each output, and how outputs and lessons would be disseminated. The IPR question required the applicant to state whether it would use the default SIF arrangement or propose an alternative and justify it. These requirements matter because the programme treats learning and future adoption as part of the public value of network-funded innovation.

3. Complete the finances and submit

Each organisation had to complete its own project costs, organisation details, and funding details exclusive of VAT. The value-for-money answer had to explain the total project cost, SIF request, how funding and costs were balanced across partners, the compulsory private contribution, partner financing, subcontractor costs, other innovation funding, existing assets or facilities, and the route toward commercialisation or business-as-usual use.

Before submitting, the lead applicant had to check that the information was correct, the project met the eligibility and scope criteria, every section was marked complete, and all partners had completed their assigned sections and accepted the terms and conditions. The IFS allowed a submitted application to be reopened until the deadline, but it had to be resubmitted before the closing time. Innovate UK recommended contacting support at least 15 working days before the deadline if an applicant needed accessibility or other application guidance.

The official competition page says applications were reviewed by three independent assessors against the SIF Eligibility Criteria, and that all applicants would receive feedback. If an application was successful, the lead received an email and used the unique link in that message to complete Project Setup. The setup process required project-manager and finance-lead contacts, partner finance contacts, project location, answers to requested financial queries, and a quarterly breakdown of project-level costs. Ofgem then issued a Project Direction after setup, confirming the conditions, deliverables, costs, and milestones for the Discovery phase.

Status and how to use this page

There is no basis for presenting this exact Round 5 Discovery C6 call as open: the official UKRI page says Closed, and the IFS page says the competition is now closed. Keep the metadata deadline as 2026-06-24 because it is the real closing date, and use the historical-reference flag to distinguish an archive entry from a live listing.

Ofgem’s programme page confirms that SIF is a multi-year programme and publishes later cycle dates. The next-cycle information is useful for monitoring, but it does not supply a replacement deadline for this specific closed competition. Before pursuing a later SIF call, confirm that the new IFS page still includes the desired Round 5 phase and challenge, then recheck the lead-network rule, requested amount, private contribution, project duration, application questions, templates, and submission deadline. Do not copy the dates or application link from this archive entry into a new proposal without that verification.