National Grid gets more money for demand-side response

0

cradlepicNational Grid will be allowed to spend more money promoting and simplifying demand-side response, the regulator has said.

The company’s regulated spending and return is governed by an eight year price control period signed off by Ofgem. The regulator has reviewed National Grid’s spending plans for the period 2013-21 and found that it needs less money in some areas and more in others.

Ofgem will allow National Grid an extra £4.5m for implementing the Strategic Balancing Reserve (SBR) and Demand Side Balancing Reserve (DSBR) programmes, which are schemes to ensure sufficient capacity. Without those schemes, the capacity margin this winter would have been almost nothing.

While National Grid spent significant sums on SBR, which pays power stations to be available if needed, the demand-side response (DSR) market also gained some benefit from the DSBR service.

Based on half-hourly meter data and, unlike the capacity market, requiring little in the way of new metering equipment, DSBR offered a simple route to market. It has allowed aggregators to bring new participants into the balancing market due to its simplicity. DSR aggregators now aim to bring those businesses into other balancing schemes as the DSBR market winds up ahead of the start of the capacity mechanism.

National Grid is also spending money to increase awareness and uptake of demand response, largely through its Power Responsive platform. Much of the feedback it has received is around simplifying the market and allowing aggregators to access wholesale and balancing markets, which would enable them to access more areas in which to trade their customers’ flexibility. Grid says it aims to simplify DSR schemes.

Ofgem plans to allow the system operator an additional £2m to fund those engagement and simplification activities.

The Energyst is putting together a conference and report on demand-side response. A handful of tickets remain available for the conference, which takes place in London on 8 September. Find out more here.

Related stories:

Free demand-side response conference

Demand-side response: Give us your views

National Grid must provide a plan for battery market, says SmartestEnergy

Can National Grid hit its 2020 DSR target?

Limejump boss: Big six will have to acquire aggregators or lose relevence

National Grid buys 3.6GW of back-up power to cover winter

Three policy tweaks that could enable 10GW of battery storage

Decc, Ofgem and National Grid must make battery storage stack-up

Ofgem: Energy flexibility will become more valuable than energy efficiency

National Grid boss: future of energy is demand not supply

National Grid says impact of solar requires greater system flexibility

National Grid signs 20MW demand-side response contract with battery storage operator

National Grid says UK will miss 2020 targets, predicts big battery future

Major changes to capacity market proposed

Hot technology: energy storage via heat battery

Western Power Distribution ramps up demand-response trials, calls for participants

Smart grids ‘require local control and businesses must play or pay’

National Grid must simplify demand response to scale UK market

Energy Technologies Institute: Let private firms run smartgrid trials

Flexitricity blasts transitional capacity market as Npower plots supermarket sweep

Is Triad past its peak?

Click here to see if you qualify for a free subscription to the print edition of The Energyst, or to renew.

Follow us at @EnergystMedia. For regular bulletins, sign up for the free newsletter.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here