After its second flexibility tender UK Power Networks has offered contracts to six companies across eight different locations. They will install or recruit new flexible capacity with a total value of more than £450,000 and a total capacity of 18.2MW. The technologies involved are a mix of energy storage, demand side response, renewable energy and other generators.
Flexibility contracts have been offered in:
- Brandon
- Leighton Buzzard
- Lewes Newhaven
- Lithos
- Merton
- Mill Hill
- Romney Warren
- St Helier
Barry Hatton, director of asset management at UK Power Networks said: “Flexibility offers a wealth of opportunities for the energy resources connected to our network like wind and solar plants, but also demand side response to help us create an open, transparent and accountable new market for their services.
“All of the bids we accepted in this tender round met our robust economic criteria to ensure they will benefit our customers by offering lower costs in comparison to the traditional approach of building new assets. The UK is a world-leader in smart grid technology and flexibility has a key role to play as we move towards a decarbonised, decentralised and digitised network that will offer significant benefits to our customers.”
By 2023, UK Power Networks estimates its market for flexibility could be over 200MW. It hopes to create new markets for distributed generation, such as wind and solar farms and electricity storage to offer their resources to network operators. The company also believes that the increased competition will get more renewable energy onto the network at lower cost.