UKPN to spend £12m on flexibility services

UK Power Networks is committing £12 million in funding for flexibility services across the South East and East of England.

20th February 2019 by Networks

UKPN to spend £12m on flexibility services

The funding will be spent across 28 locations in an effort to kick-start a new market for energy generators and other energy resources to sell flexibility services to network operators and lower costs to customers.

The company is aiming to deliver a stronger, more resilient electricity network by helping to manage electricity demand at peak times. Flexibility services seek to save customers money by buying generation or storage capacity to manage peaks in demand rather than spending on large-scale projects to build new infrastructure.

Companies now have until 12 March to register to tender and then an auction to bid for up to four contracts to provide flexibility services from winter 2019 onwards will be held later in late March. Additionally, UK Power Networks is reducing the minimum capacity threshold from 100kW to 50kW to allow more providers to participate in the tender.

UK Power Networks has allocated the £12m pot across 28 locations according to network requirements across the different locations. The allocation of the available revenues can be found here.

UK Power Networks is using online platform Piclo (formerly known as Open Utility) to host the bidding process. Piclo is an online platform which matches energy providers’ resources with the network operator’s local need for flexible energy resources.

Piclo enables flexible energy resources to explore an interactive map that matches providers with specific areas of high demand on the network, places where UK Power Networks is seeking flexibility to add capacity.

Sotiris Georgiopoulos, head of smart grid development at UK Power Networks, said: “It is early days for the flexibility market, but we’re fully committed to it because we know that it’s the right thing to do for our customers. The sums we’re investing will ultimately save customers money by extending the life of our existing infrastructure.

“Could you reduce your consumption or increase generation on instruction at peak times? If so and you’re a generator or developer with assets in any of our 28 locations, or if you can install new assets by winter 2020-21, then we’d be really happy to speak to you about how you can take part.

“We’re setting out to develop an open and transparent new market that will make our network stronger and more resilient while delivering value for our customers.”