Key flexibility project awarded funding from Ofgem

We have been awarded funding from Ofgem, as part of the Electricity Network Innovation Competition (NIC), to develop an Electricity Flexibility and Forecasting System (EFFS).

EFFS will work closely with the Energy Networks Association’s (ENA) Open Networks project which is specifying the functional requirements for DSO operation and the likely data exchanges. EFFS is also working with Fusion and Transition, NIC projects by Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution respectively that are also supporting DSO transition.

We already know that becoming a DSO will mean managing our network differently but what does that mean and how will EFFS help our transition?

“It means managing the network much more actively,” explained Jenny Woodruff, Innovation & Low Carbon Engineer who is leading the EFFS project. “We already predict future load but a Distribution Network Operator (DNO) looks years into the future. A DSO does that but also needs the ability to predict load and generation a week ahead or even in the next half-hour so it can ask customers to adjust their usage or generation to benefit the network.”

Flexibility services is the umbrella term for using the ability of customers to alter their load or generation to manage the network, creating the opportunity to avoid expensive network reinforcement and its consequent impact on consumers’ bills.

The ability to have and use flexibility services rests on the ability to forecast when they will be needed.  We have looked at forecasting in some of our innovation projects but we are aware there is a lot we don’t know. EFFS will test how WPD determines flexibility services requirements in operational timescales, instructs service providers it already has contracts with, purchases top-up services using market platforms and communicates its actions to other interested parties, such as National Grid.

To keep costs low and timescales short, we will test the new EFFS software using the flexibility services providers already involved in its other innovation projects.

The software will also be tested with data representing virtual customers to ensure it can handle the situation when there are many more potential network constraints to manage and far more providers of flexibility services than exist today.

“In 20 years’ time we expect there will be considerably more customers supplying flexibility services via electric vehicles and batteries,” said Jenny. “We also expect there will be more aggregator companies bringing them together. But as this world doesn’t yet exist, we need to build virtual scenarios to show how this brave new world might operate.”

EFFS will run for just under three years and see us link up with software provider AMT-SYBEX, EDF Energy, National Grid and an academic partner.