Global flexibility services marketplace Piclo has announced that a secondary trade on its platform, between Axle Energy and Oaktree Power, saw electric vehicle (EV) chargers enter the capacity market (CM) for the first time.
Typically, smart meter data has been required to demonstrate compliance if an EV charger were to enter the CM. Piclo’s online platform enables the secondary trade of CM obligations, operating like a secondhand marketplace where existing contracts can be traded outside of T-1 and T-4 auctions.
The company’s end-to-end platform is one of the largest in the world, with over 300,000 active assets registered, totalling over 22GW of flexible capacity. It has awarded contracts worth £74 million and acquired over 2.6GW of flexible capacity.
By giving all buyers and sellers digital access to available contracts, Piclo’s marketplace enhances transparency. It also mitigates risk by giving companies a ‘back up plan’ in case circumstances change—these factors are what enabled Axle to enter EV chargers onto the CM without smart meter data.
Piclo facilitated the transfer of a 3.7MW T-1 contract from Oaktree to Axle, in a trade equivalent to 528 7kW EV chargers. Axle launched in 2023, using its own energy flexibility platform, aimed at original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and energy suppliers, to connect EVs and home energy devices to electricity markets.
Axle CEO, Karl Bach, said: “The predominant system of using smart metering for the capacity market just doesn’t work for residential devices like EV chargers. We’ve shown that EV chargers have the accuracy, capability, and reliability to participate directly in the capacity market, paving the way for increased zero-carbon capacity in this important market.”
The CM runs two auctions a year to procure capacity for the delivery year: the first, T-4, is held four years ahead of the delivery year, followed by the T-1 auction a year before delivery. This system allows last-minute adjustments to be made and recognises that some of the new capacity providers which signed up in the first auction might be unable to deliver and need to be replaced.
However, Bach argues that more market liquidity is needed, with the infrequent auctions restricting potential capacity.
Piclo’s platform gets around this, as explained by Angie Castillo, director of operations at Oaktree: We had a last minute negotiation drop out so we were looking to fill that capacity. In the circumstances we were in, we were looking to find a buyer quite fast. [Piclo] has the database of buyers who are looking to take part in the capacity market; that opens a whole different market of resource to marry those two up.”