Flexibility – the ability to change electricity generation or use – will be at the heart of the UK’s electricity system in the years ahead. Not only will this save carbon, but it also creates huge opportunities for commercial and industrial companies to unlock new sources of revenue by getting paid to flex their demand.
Flexibility, and the potential to gain revenue from it, is an increasing feature of different parts of the electricity market. One example of this is the Demand Flexibility Service (DFS), a relatively new opportunity operated by the Energy Systems Operator (ESO) as part of the suite of markets and services it uses to manage the country’s electricity grid. ESO first created the DFS in Winter 2022, meaning 2023 is only the second time it is being operated.
Homeowners, businesses and industrial sites can choose to participate in DFS through one of 42 “registered providers” – typically retail suppliers or aggregators. These registered providers are responsible for processing huge volumes of data in order to meet ESO requirements.
CUB is one such provider and approached Piclo to help solve this data challenge. In November 2023, Piclo announced a new Piclo Max product, with a vision to help flex sellers access all electricity markets. As part of this, it developed a beta version of an automated DFS settlement report, to streamline the data processing CUB needs to undertake, remove manual steps and convert into a format required by ESO. This has made it significantly easier for CUB to successfully access the DFS – and therefore allowed CUB to help more than 92 commercial and industrial customers sell their flexibility into the DFS, and get paid to change their energy use.
