Together with our partners at the UK’s leading flexibility marketplace provider Electron, we've successfully completed an early-stage live trial using day-ahead markets to support customer supplies during planned power works in Maidenhead.
During a two-week period, we procured short-notice flexibility in low volumes to help keep customers’ electricity supplies stable while engineers carried out essential maintenance. This reduced the number of homes and businesses at risk of losing power.
Ourselves and Electron configured and launched the day-ahead market within one week. We then published a day-ahead flexibility requirement one day before delivery, and invited a small number of providers to temporarily reduce their demand or adjust generation during evening peak hours. Providers responded through Electron’s platform, ElectronConnect, allowing us to secure support close to real time. We deliberately limited volumes to test the process under controlled conditions.
ABOVE: A screenshot of the ElectronConnect platform as it appeared during the day-ahead market trial (Credit: Electron)
The trial delivered 507kW of flexibility across two weeks, with three assets participating.
During larger planned outages where infrastructure permits, we can reroute network supplies to help ensure no households are without power. Using Flexibility at such times reduces the potential for customers to lose supplies if an unexpected issue arises while maintenance is underway.
By using the day-ahead market in this way, we actively managed the situation without relying solely on longer-term contracts. The approach increased the available window for planned works and enabled maintenance during higher-demand periods, reducing the likelihood of customer disruption while helping the network operate efficiently.
The trial also explored outage management as an expanded use case for flexibility procurement. By integrating this requirement into the day-ahead market, ourselves and Electron created additional opportunities for flexibility service providers to participate at short notice, supporting broader market access and opening new potential revenue streams for providers.
Paul Fitzgerald, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks’ Flexibility Markets Manager, says:
“Using flexibility in this way helps our customers by reducing the likelihood of them going off supply during planned maintenance.
“This trial has demonstrated the potential for flexibility to help further secure the network and better support our customers. We hope in time to be able to use flex in this way to carry out network maintenance that requires outages at times of the year when we wouldn’t normally be able to.”
Jo-Jo Hubbard, CEO and Co-Founder of Electron, says:
“This trial highlights the potential of flexibility becoming fully responsive when moving closer to real time. By enabling SSEN to secure support at short notice, day-ahead markets help protect customers during essential works while unlocking new opportunities for providers. That kind of agility is critical as networks manage growing demand and an increasingly decentralised energy system.”
SSEN and Electron will now review the operational and commercial results to assess how day-ahead markets could become part of regular outage management in the future.