Engagement with flexibility service providers

We will engage with flexibility service providers to understand any improvements to our connections process required to support the continued growth of distributed energy resources.

The ability of DNOs to connect and manage every type of electrical load, whether demand or generation, is imperative for the efficient and effective running of the distribution network. There is an increasing number of flexibility service providers who are cultivating new ideas and bringing new technologies to the market, so it's important that we understand we need to do to facilitate the continued growth of distributed energy sources including demand side response (DSR), energy storage and flexible generation.

We have already engaged directly with three of our largest customers to explore how they might be able to provide DSR services and have also confirmed a partnership with a flexibility provider platform. This collaboration acts as an introductory service between us and potential flexibility service providers, helping them to navigate through the on-boarding process of becoming a provider.

We will continue to engage with other flexibility service providers and to work with them to progress our end-to-end process roadmap to ensure the flexibility procurement method is optimised for both us and the individual providers. These are the first steps towards a much larger objective, to create a roadmap that will ensure flexibility operators can provide these services successfully.

We presented our approach and progress at a dedicated workshop held at our Connections Customer Forum in November 2018 satisfying the target performance measure for this action. We gave attendees an update on the work done to date and opened up a discussion on how we could help new and existing connections customers  to access the on-boarding process, should they wish to provide flexibility services at some point in the future.