Supermarket chains, energy storage operators and factories in Yorkshire and the North East among those encouraged to register for revenue-earning auction next week

With just over a week to go before registration closes, Northern Powergrid is calling for anyone with significant assets connected to its network to get in touch and register for its upcoming auction to provide power flexibility services in exchange for commercial return.

The operator is looking to procure flexibility for network resilience across the North East and Yorkshire.

“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,” Andrew McKenna, Commercial Development Manager at Northern Powergrid, explained.  “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 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.

Northern Powergrid closes registration for its auction on 21 February 2020.
 

MORE ABOUT NORTHERN POWERGRID'S FLEXIBILITY AUCTION

In a first-ever move for a UK Distribution Network Operator (DNO), the company will conclude each competition with a reverse Dutch e-auction* to procure flexibility from customer-led assets across its patch to support network resilience activity across its power distribution system at the best possible price for its 8 million customers.

The exercise will see firms across seven key locations in the region bid to be in a position to provide flexibility, with the aim of procuring up to 100MW of capacity across these locations. The locations are: St Andrews Road (Huddersfield), Staygate (West Yorkshire), Wold Newton (East Yorkshire), Featherstone (West Yorkshire), Greatham (County Durham), Denwick (Northumberland) and Guisborough (North Yorkshire).

By opening the following link for Northern Powergrid’s e-Tendering portal, and selecting ‘opportunities’, prospective providers can register to participate in the Dynamic Purchasing System – https://berkshirehathawayenergy-npg.app.jaggaer.com/esop/upv-host/public/berkshirehathawayenergy/npg/login.jst

Northern Powergrid is especially interested to hear from:

• major energy users (such as factories or supermarkets that can engage in demand side response),
• power generators (minimum 100kW),
• aggregators of smaller assets, and
• storage operators

The network operator is keen for those with assets in the named locations to register. When a final contract has been awarded, the successful bidders will enter a pool of assets that can be instructed to turn up (generators) or down (demand side response) to support a stable power supply in the region.