Flexibility has a growing role in ensuring networks are run in an efficient and cost-effective way, while also supporting further electrification. We're leading on the development of an innovative tool, which will assess in new ways when flexibility can be best deployed to support network development.

Ofgem’s emerging “Build and Flex” approach for the forthcoming ED3 price control period will see flexibility increasingly used to ensure networks are right-sized, cost-efficient, and able to support requests to connect, together with the delivery of new power system infrastructure.

We are concerned about the ongoing cost pressures of high energy bills on homes and businesses – and this is one reason why we're at the forefront of finding new ways to get the most value out of existing network infrastructure, and to support the move to electrification, which will help decouple energy costs from volatile fossil fuel prices.

To this end, we're developing a new Cost Benefit Analysis tool, in collaboration with the experts at Baringa. This will integrate network assessment data across multiple use cases to evaluate the costs and benefits associated with using flexibility. It will provide greater confidence for when using flexibility is the most efficient solution, while enabling more robust assessments and generating new insights into various examples where Flexibility could be deployed, including:    

  • Speeding up generation and demand connections to support economic growth and electrification

  • Further improving network access through earlier connections and curtailment management

  • Enhancing planned outage management by reducing the use of mobile diesel generation, while also lowering the risk of customer interruptions, and improving workforce efficiency

  • Being able to carry out essential works requiring network outages at more times of the year than is currently the case

We’re keen to support the widest-possible adoption of our approach and have shared this tool with fellow Energy Networks Association (ENA) members who operate distribution networks across Great Britain, to help drive a greater degree of common practice across the country’s electricity system.

Paul Fitzgerald, SSEN Distribution’s Flexibility Markets Manager, says:

“We’re key enablers of electrification, but we need to deliver it in an affordable, efficient and sustainable way. The smart, judicious, growing use of flexibility is key to making this happen.

“Whether it’s accelerating connections or improving how we carry out planned outages for essential maintenance, new uses for flexibility will deliver greater value across the network, the wider energy system, and for society.

“Here at SSEN, we’re playing a leading role in this space, sharing our progress and learnings through the ENA working group and directly with our fellow network operators. This openness will aid the development of a consistent, industry-wide framework for evaluating new uses for flexibility.

“Through our approach, we’re providing leadership in our sector, setting new benchmarks for how flexibility can be used across the energy system. This will help enable all of us to move forward together with confidence as new opportunities for using flexibility emerge.”