Forget small scale DSR until we get ‘big flex’ right, says Kiwi Power boss

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Zingher: Get ‘big DSR’ right before trying to go granular

Kiwi Power boss Yoav Zingher has cautioned the flexibility industry against trying to run before it can walk.

Speaking at the 2018 Power Responsive conference, Zingher provided the sceptic’s view on a panel that outlined opportunity and progress within flexibility markets.

Rules of engagement

Zingher was critical of the delay in the ADE’s aggregator code of conduct, and said the market badly requires some rules of engagement.

Speaking on the same panel, Ofgem’s Louise van Rensburg said Ofgem had considered requiring aggregators to be licenced, but had decided to wait and see how the code of conduct works.

The panel was asked what government, regulator and System Operator were doing to bring small- and community scale flexibility to market.

National Grid’s Colm Murphy cited local energy market trials in Cornwall and the Power Potential programme as “exciting” projects that could help both distribution and transmission operators manage constraints via smaller scale assets.

But Kiwi’s Zingher suggested SME and domestic flexibility may be some way off.

“I think when [small scale] flexibility picks up, it will pick up in a big way. But it needs to work in the larger space first,” he said, suggesting that while the industry is right to celebrate successes at events like Power Responsive, “we are also really bad at admitting failure”.

The UK is “only scratching the surface of large scale DSR, and until we get that right moving the attention to [smaller providers] won’t work”, said Zingher.

Capacity overhaul

While applauding National Grid’s work to open up ancillary services, Zingher was critical of the Capacity Market in terms of what it has delivered to date.

“The capacity market was designed to bring forward new conventional sources [of power] and unconventional sources. I am not sure it has done that. Prices have come down dramatically, and while that brings down prices for consumers, they are actually just paying more for what they already had,” said Zingher.

“If we want to get new things built, what are we doing to do about it?”

Do you provide DSR? Or is it too opaque, risky and complex? Give us your views via this 5 minute survey for our forthcoming DSR and Storage reports.

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