Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) Distribution has announced a new tender for 70MW of flexibility capacity this year.
There is an anticipated risk of a local network becoming overloaded in central southern England, leading the network operator to seek contracts in 16 zones with a total value estimated at £6.7 million.
“We are excited to announce this major increase in the use of availability payments in our southern licence area,” said Gavin Stewart, head of flexible solutions at SSEN.
“Owners, operators or aggregators of generation, storage or demand assets with flex capacity over 50kW may be able to provide flexibility services in return for payment from SSEN for helping to balance the grid. Flexibility allows us to manage the network cost effectively, which ultimately benefits our customers.”
The network operator is holding a webinar on 11 August to elaborate on the opportunity, following which flexibility providers will be asked to submit pre-qualification information before 19 August 2022 in order to participate in the tender.
Distribution network operators are increasingly turning to flexibility tenders to manage demand on their systems, with a record 3.7GW of distribution network flexibility tendered for over the last year according to figures from the Energy Networks Association.
This was a 31% increase on 2021, and a 76% increase on 2020, freeing up almost 4GW of capacity to help manage network congestion on Britain’s electricity networks.
As well as the most recent tenders, in March SSEN launched a new Distribution System Operator action plan focused on developing a flexibility marketplace, delivering network flexibility and forecasting and planning future needs.