It’s safe to say that everybody who works in energy policy will be hoping for a nice, quiet festive break to recharge after the busiest year for energy reform in many years. With the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) launched under the last government, we were asked some very big questions about how the future system should be structured. Those debates are still rumbling on because, before long, the election was called, and we welcomed the new government with its clean power mission. Flexitricity is fully supportive of the plans to turbocharge zero carbon generation, and we’re seeing encouraging signs of recognition that this means demand must be similarly unleashed in order for the system to be balanced affordably.
The big picture in NESO’s Clean Power 2030 advice to government is obviously good news, but my own highlights of 2024 have been the geekier, hard fought-for, concrete improvements to market rules which will allow Flexitricity to bring more tangible MW of flexibility onto the system.
Like NESO’s launch of a 300MW pot to bring aggregated assets into the Balancing Mechanism with relaxed (I would say proportionate) requirements for operational metering. And the Go Live date for P415 which will soon allow Flexitricity to bring customers into on-the-day wholesale markets to earn revenue by supporting the grid, regardless of who supplies their electricity. And Ofgem’s approval of a fair compensation mechanism for the Local Constraints Market, so that we can pay Scottish energy users to be paid to use more electricity, rather than curtailing wind farms. Changes like these take far too long to work through the approval process, but now they’re here we can prove that small assets providing ad hoc flexibility can make a material difference.
If Santa is reading this, in 2025 I would like a joined-up flexibility strategy out to 2030 and beyond, with sufficient resource to staff it in DESNZ, NESO and Ofgem, plus a recognition that industrial & commercial energy users can probably move a bit faster than domestic customers. And, like every year, a stocking filled with operational metering reform.