Almost out of the blue, last week, while all attention was on Brexit, came a decision from the General Court of the European Union that has led to the suspension of the GB Capacity Market. This means that all capacity payments are on hold, as are all future auctions. The case before the Court was…
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National Grid recently published a roadmap to widening access to the Balancing Mechanism to smaller, distributed assets and demand-side response. The increasing de-centralisation of the electricity system, along with the growth in intermittent generation, is making the task of balancing the system more challenging (and expensive). As the amount of flexible, dispatchable generation on the…
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In recent weeks, much has been made of the fact that coal has dropped out of the merit order for days at a time. While much of the commentary is around trying to prove that the system can run just fine without dirty thermal power (conveniently ignoring the reliance of the system on coal during…
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The electricity system is in transition. Transmission connected, centralised synchronous generation is being displaced by multiple small installations of intermittent asynchronous generation connected at the distribution level. Advances in sub-transmission technology including as storage, smart homes, electric vehicles, DSR and others are challenging the traditional design of networks. Accommodating these changes though traditional DNO operations…
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The last couple of months have seen some interesting newsflow in relation to electricity storage. Storage projects are increasingly popular, with developments occurring at every level of the system from grid-connected utility-scale projects to behind-the-meter domestic storage, and the Government together with Ofgem is keen to remove barriers to entry to allow storage assets to…
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Last week Energyst published its latest report into the demand side response market, which confirmed the findings of previous reports, that businesses are generally positive about DSR as long as operations are not affected. Un-tapped appetite among SMEs was also identified. The survey found that triad avoidance is the most common DSR action 57%), with…
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Following on from my previous post on energy efficiency, I was very interested to read about a recent study by the University of Bath which shows a significant gap between the forecast energy efficiency of new buildings and their actual performance once in use. “A correlation analysis indicated little correlation between which variables were thought…
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This week I attended an event run by the Energy Institute on whether in the context of the UK’s industrial strategy the policy can keep up with the energy market. One comment that was made repeatedly was that UK businesses are bad at exploiting opportunities for energy efficiency, and that no-one really understands why this…
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The need for the new Turn-Up DSR service was clearly shown on Saturday 25 March when daytime electricity demand fell below overnight demand for the first time, due to high levels of solar PV generation. According to government data, there is currently over 7.3 GW operational solar PV installed in GB, with a further 446…
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Turndown DSR is what most people think of when demand-side response is mentioned, ie reduction of demand by consumers in response to either price signals or instructions from the system operator. As it involves reduced consumption and moving consumption from periods of higher to lower demand, turndown DSR is both economically efficient and consistent with…
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