Piclo has successfully completed the first end-to-end transactions of flexibility services for the NGESO’s new Local Constraint Market in Scotland. The new market allows Scottish homes, businesses and distribution connected generating assets to benefit when they help to manage transmission constraints – which may involve ‘turning up’ power use when there is excess power.
Piclo worked with flexibility service providers Orange Power and CUB UK Ltd. Since the end of May, across 10 different days, a total of 3MWh of flexibility was contracted and dispatched.
Rather than curtailing low carbon wind, households in Scotland were incentivised to ‘turn-up’ their low carbon assets such as charging their EVs and increasing their use of electric heating or cooling in their homes and industrial sites during specified times.
This also marks a world-first for a national electricity network control room to use a Cloud based Saas platform to procure and dispatch flexibility services.
Up to now generating companies have been paid to curtail wind power when there is a constraint – over 6.5TWh was curtained in 2021 and 2023.
This initiative will help to manage peak wind energy flows and participate in creating a local marketplace that diverts extra wind power into local assets at times when southward flows are at capacity.
James Johnston, CEO at Piclo said: “This is a momentous milestone for Piclo and the ESO. It is the first time the ESO’s control room has used a cloud based platform as part of their trading operations . This marks a turning point in the energy transition, where the introduction of a digital marketplace not only democratises access to flexibility markets by reducing barriers for participation but also facilitates a more efficient and streamlined operation of the electricity network. We start today with 3MWh and our ambition is to grow to 30GWh. This has been a massive boost to our mission to decarbonise the world’s grids.”
Companies are invited to register on Piclo Flex and upload any eligible distribution connected assets they have in Scotland to maintain the balance between energy supply and demand.
Claire Dykta, Head of Markets at the ESO said: “Delivery of the Local Constraint Market is an important step for the ESO as we look to address rising costs and unlock wider flexibility service options from distributed assets. Delivering short-term solutions such as this help us on the path to deliver the goals of our Markets roadmap, to deliver long term management of constraint costs and to increase the value and availability of flexibility services. We look forward to working with Piclo to expand this Local Constraint Market further and grow the value it can deliver for consumers.”