World-first for Constraints Market

The anticipated growth in renewable generation in Scotland is increasing power transfer across the Scottish boundaries, which is forecast to increase constraints at or above the B6 boundary and ultimately costs to the end consumer. Our LCM will manage transmission constraints to reduce consumer costs and utilise zero carbon generation.

The latest procurement of residential and industrial demand response from Orange Power and CUB UK Ltd, using the Piclo Flex platform, has enabled a total of 3MW of flexibility to be contracted and dispatched across ten different days.

Scottish households were incentivised to turn-up their low carbon flex assets including heat pumps, EVs and electric heating during peak wind energy flows rather than reducing wind energy production. By incentivising consumer flexibility, we were able to continue utilising wind generation to prevent constraint payments, which costs consumers money, and continue benefiting from zero carbon electricity generation.

This initiative helps to manage peak wind generation periods by using the excess generation locally when southward flows are at capacity – benefiting Scottish households and businesses that are charging EVs, topping up battery storage and local Scottish pumped hydro stations.

Utilising consumer flexibility to prevent constraint payments using a Cloud based SaaS platform is a world-first for any national electricity network control room.

Claire Dykta, Head of Markets, ESO said: 

“Delivery of the Local Constraint Market is an important step for the ESO as we look to address rising costs and unlock wider flexibility service options from distributed assets. Delivering short-term solutions such as this help us on the path to deliver the goals of our Markets Roadmap, to deliver long-term management of constraint costs and increase the value and availability of flexibility services. We look forward to working with Piclo to expand this Local Constraint Market further and grow the value it can deliver for consumers.”

To learn more about our LCM, including the service trials and development click here.

For more detail about this project, visit Piclo’s website.