Last week, Northern Ireland Electricity Networks (NIE Networks) published their first-ever flexibility service competitions, meaning Flex Providers with assets located in Northern Ireland now have the opportunity to earn revenue from DSO flexibility competitions.
As a first step, Flex Providers should upload their assets to Piclo Flex to find out whether the assets fall into NIE Network’s Flexibility Trial Zones.
Go to Piclo Flex for competition details or to upload your assets
Click here for NIE Networks’ Flexibility page
Flexibility is essential to reducing whole-system costs, enabling more low carbon technologies to connect to the grid and ultimately achieving a cost-effective Net Zero.
NIE Network’s competitions are seeking 40MW, 35GWh of network flexibility services across 17 Flexibility Trial Zones. As part of NIE Networks’ FLEX project, the competitions will be for the period 2021-2022, although this could potentially be extended until 2024, and represents 15% of all customers in Northern Ireland
The announcement marks an important milestone in NIE Networks transition to becoming a Distribution System Operator and the project’s objectives include evaluating local markets for flexibility, the viability of using flexibility to meet network requirements and the associated financial benefits.