The Department of Energy and Climate Change has awarded 24 UK businesses electricity demand reduction (EDR) pilot contracts, totalling £4.7 million in support.
The EDR pilot project is testing whether demand reduction projects carried out by businesses could compete for future funding in the capacity market alongside generators, demand-side response and storage.
The second phase of the pilot was launched in June last year with £6 million of funding made available. UK firms were then asked to assemble business cases and an auction was held last month, the results of which were disclosed last Friday.
A total of 24 UK-based businesses were successful in the auction with 37 projects being given approval. Those organisations will now have to deliver at least 23,307kW of energy savings between November and February during either 2016/17 or 2017/18.
DECC disclosed the weighted average price bid to be £203 per kilowatt.
The largest single contract awarded was to Energys Group, which was granted more than £1.5 million to improve the efficiency of its lighting across multiple sites in the UK in the 2017/18 delivery year. Energys also received around £900,000 of funding – also for lighting improvements – during the 2016/17 period.
Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s was also one of the big winners, landing four contracts in the 2017/18 delivery year worth around £800,000 on improvements to in-store lighting.
All but three of the 37 successful projects involve lighting improvements, backing up research published last week that demonstrated the efficiency technology to be of the most interest to UK firms.
Other successful businesses include the British Heart Foundation, British Gas, Travis Perkins and the Football Association.