![National Grid boss Steve Holliday will hand over reigns to John Pettigrew in March](/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Steve-Holliday-lrg-150x150.png)
Outgoing National Grid boss Steve Holliday believes that businesses will make four times more impact than households on the UK’s transition towards a smarter power system.
Signing off in an opinion piece in the Telegraph before stepping down next month, Holliday said the power system was changing rapidly, but remained robust. He rubbished suggestions that the country was heading for power shortages and blackouts, calling for a change of narrative to bring more businesses into demand-side response programmes.
While the government ploughs on with a £12bn domestic smart meter programme, Holliday suggested businesses should be the primary focus.
“To be transformative, smart meters need to empower consumers to gain greater control of their energy and the price they pay for it,” he wrote in the paper. “Although the plans cover households, it is businesses where estimates indicate that four-fifths of the potential energy savings from smart control technology can be found.”
Holliday cited National Grid’s own push to bring businesses into system balancing as part of a “revolution” in the power market and name-checked business energy supplier and demand management firm Tempus Energy as the shape of things to come.
Want to know more about demand-side response? Download Energyst Media’s free demand-side response report, co-sponsored by National Grid, here.
Related articles:
Free download: Demand side response report 2015
National Grid must simplify demand response to scale UK market
40% of firms say they could shift energy use as National Grid asks them to turn up
Flexitricity to pay firms to use power when wind blows
Dong enters demand-side response market with wind power balancing service
National Grid buys 475MW of demand response to cover winter
2016: the year half hourly settlement will hit your power bill
Government to consult on demand response in spring
Energy Technologies Institute: Let private firms run smartgrid trials
Flexitricity blasts transitional capacity market as Npower plots supermarket sweep
Grid buys 3.6GW of back up power to prevent blackouts
Flexitricity warns demand response cannot be rushed as winter looms
National Infrastructure Commission to focus on energy storage and demand response
Tempus: A five year old can see capacity market is anticompetitive
Smart grids ‘require local control and businesses must play or pay’
National Grid plots superfast grid balancing service
Many major energy users can’t be flexible, says manufacturing chief
National Grid moots demand side response rule changes as winter power margins tighten
Keep calm and scale demand response, says Scots energy inquiry
National Grid flags demand response changes, urges suppliers and TPIs to deliver
National Grid must simplify demand response to bring in UK businesses
Ofgem boss flags rule changes to speed demand response
National Grid launches major demand side push
Demand response: Suppliers and aggregators ignoring 80% of UK firms
UK firms with CHP plant could be paid to stop exporting power
National Grid: No margin? No sweat
Lord Redesdale ‘puts money on brownouts or blackouts by year end’
Utilitywise bets against Lord Redesdale on blackouts risk
Demand response provider teams with Honeywell, touts for new business
Click here to see if you qualify for a free subscription to the print magazine, or to renew.
Follow us at @EnergystMedia. For regular bulletins, sign up for the free newsletter.