National Grid’s electricity control room has introduced a new ‘Distributed Resource’ Desk to give instructions much faster to smaller generators, battery storage operators and demand side response providers. Staff on the Distributed Resource Desk focus entirely on optimising the use of these new assets and National Grid ESO said in its first day it increased the contribution from small assets by 113% on the average day in the past.
In the first 24 hours of operation, the number of bids and offers accepted by the control room from these aggregated providers was 87MWh. National Grid ESO says aggregators such as Limejump and Flexitricity, acting on behalf of small energy providers can currently offer 52MW of power to the balancing mechanism (the part of the market where calls are sent out for immediate action, to fine tune supply and demand and make sure they match). The Distributed Resource Desk will help new participants in this market develop their capabilities and by April 2019 the ESO expects it will nearly triple, to 145MW.
The new Desk works as part of the ESO control room, which receives bids and offers daily from generators detailing the amount of power they can provide, the time they can provide it, and at what price. The control room accepts or rejects these bids based on price and what is needed to manage the network.