Northern Powergrid is looking for major energy users such as supermarkets, as well as companies with generation or storage, who are willing to be paid to turn their usage up or down to help manage the local electricity system.

Companies in seven locations – St Andrews Road (Huddersfield), Staygate (West Yorkshire), Wold Newton (East Yorkshire), Featherstone (West Yorkshire), Greatham (County Durham), Denwick (Northumberland) and Guisborough (North Yorkshire) – have until Thursday 20 February to register to bid to supply the service to the network operator.

“Many energy or facilities managers may not realise that their business is suitable for providing flexibility services. You don’t need to be huge power-hungry factory that employees hundreds of people. You might be a smaller manufacturing unit, a chain of supermarkets or shops or an office complex with multiple sites,” said Andrew McKenna, commercial development manager at Northern Powergrid.  “If anyone thinks they might be suitable, we encourage them to get in touch for more information ahead of the registration deadline and we can help them review if they are a suitable candidate to earn extra income in exchange for offering up flexibility services.”

The company will conclude each competition with a reverse Dutch e-auction, where the auctioneer incrementally raises the price in set time periods from a low starting point until bidder(s) agree to sell at the stated price.

The auction is for a programme named Restore Flexibility and it will help the operator manage the network on the rare occasions when it experiences network faults. Where it experiences such issues, customers may be able to support the system through providing flexibility – by shifting their energy consumption temporarily or flexing their generation assets after receiving an instruction from the DNO – and in return the customer would get paid a price/MWh, as set in the e-auction process.

To register to participate in the Dynamic Purchasing System, open Northern Powergrid’s e-Tendering portal here and select ‘opportunities’.

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