A ‘turn-up’ For The Record Books

The University of St Andrews deliver a smart energy world first as they help keep zero carbon offshore wind energy flowing.

With the help of Gridimp, the University delivered a first-of-a-kind intraday demand response for National Grid ESO, traded through Piclo’s flexibility market platform.   

As part of NGESO’s Local Constraint Management (LCM) Program, an innovative user-friendly energy flexibility service, consumers get paid to consume more energy at low demand times. The call for flexibility was made, the offer of response accepted, and capacity dispatched all within the same 24hrs.

Crucially, now, for the first time, consumers can start to independently access the value of intra-day energy trading, long the preserve of energy companies and industry insiders.

Consumers like the University of St Andrews responding to grid need is not new, what is highly significant though, is their being able to trade and deliver near real-time.  This advanced approach is what is required to unlock the vast latent flexibility consumers can offer to support the widescale transition to renewable generation.

The university was paid for doing the right thing and assisting whole grid decarbonisation by filling their onsite batteries. This energy was then discharged to offset the universities own early morning energy demand peak, leaving the batteries free to soak up excess solar later the same day. Demand flexibility is in line with the universities overarching objective to minimise their impact on the grid and to support an overall infrastructure, through energy storage, to maximise the benefits from renewables.  

As a significant energy consumer, the university takes a proactive approach to delivering their Net Zero program, having already embraced energy flexibility, crucial for delivering Net Zero, they intend to expand their LCM response to include other plant like heating, ventilation, air conditioning and EV charging, which have already provided turn-down flexibility responses for Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN). The universities participation in demand response and adoption of battery storage was catalysed by participation in SPEN’s innovative Project Fusion aimed at using flexibility market innovation to manage the local network more intelligently.   

We are proud to report that the university’s response was fully automated by Gridimp and we would like to especially applaud Al Clark – Sustainability Services Manager, Derek Michell- Energy Manager, Amanda Cook- BMS Manager & Bob Watson - Electrical Engineer at UStA, who’s leadership and efforts have accelerated both their internal delivery toward energy Net Zero and unlocked their capacity to benefit the wider local community, in a constrained network area, as well as directly supporting GB energy transition through national programs like LCM.