Trinity Mirror Group hopes to earn between £800,000 and £1million from demand side response (DSR) this financial year.
The firm’s calculations are based on hitting all three winter Triad periods and delivering full output when called upon within the short-term operating reserve (STOR) programme and Transitional Arrangement (TA) capacity market.
Speaking at Energyst Media’s DSR Event, Garry Crask, Trinity Mirror Group’s production engineering manager, said the media group hoped to earn between £400k-£500k from its DSR activities at its Watford site, with similar revenues from its Oldham facility. The sites combined have around 11MW back-up generation.
Crask told delegates, mainly other end-user organisations, that participating in DSR had not been straightforward.
Export MPANS had to be registered, the firm had to obtain export acceptance from UK Power Networks, its G59/2 relay had to be replaced and a PPA company to invoice for exported electricity had to be found along with better generator service contractors, according to Crask.
Meanwhile, ahead of participation, the firm realised its generator control gear, installed with the diesel units in 1999 ahead of the millennium bug scare, could not be relied upon, so were upgraded at a cost of around £100,000.
“We were going to have to upgrade it at some point anyway, STOR or no STOR,” said Crask, “so the revenue made it far easier to justify.”
The firm later upgraded its cooling systems after finding the generators could not deliver maximum output in the summer months due to overheating.
Via aggregator Kiwi Power, Crask said Trinity Mirror Group had assessed other DSR schemes, such as Frequency Response, which would require the firm to turn down output within 30 seconds, but felt that the modifications needed to its building management system were not cost effective.
The firm is now evaluating battery storage as a means to deliver balancing services to National Grid, said Crask. 
Garry Crask was speaking at a conference on demand-side response organised in conjunction with a new DSR market report. The report contains a survey of 200 end-users, as well as the views of National Grid, aggregators and suppliers, and other market experts. Download it free of charge, here.
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