Top tips for participating in DSO flexibility competitions
Piclo’s Commercial Manager, Stefanos Anagnostopoulos, has helped many new and experienced Flex Providers to successfully take part in DSO flexibility markets. In this blog, he shares his top four tips on participating in DSO competitions and winning flexibility contracts.

There are currently over 1,400 DSO flexibility competitions live on Piclo Flex for Flex Providers to win contracts from.

Piclo’s Commercial Manager, Stefanos Anagnostopoulos, has helped many new and experienced Flex Providers to successfully take part in DSO flexibility markets. In this blog, he shares his top four tips on participating in DSO competitions and winning flexibility contracts.

You can find out more information about all open flexibility competitions by visiting Piclo Flex. Upcoming deadlines include:

  • SPEN qualification deadline: 11 June 2021
  • ENWL qualification deadline: 2 July 2021, make sure to complete their PQQ

1. Don’t leave qualification and bidding to the last minute

Leaving qualification and bidding to the last minute could lead to unsuccessful participation in competitions for a number of reasons, so it’s a risky move you should try to avoid!

The DNO might reject your qualification application (called a Dynamic Purchasing System on Piclo Flex) for simple mistakes or for not providing the right information. Whilst you can apply to qualify as many times as you need, you might not have the time to reapply if left to the last minute. This means you could miss out on the opportunity to earn revenue from DSO flexibility markets even when you have suitable assets located in the right areas.

Qualifying early is also important to give yourself plenty of time to assess all the commercial opportunities open to you. Analysing and understanding the bidding strategy for your assets gives you a greater chance of winning contracts in these markets.

Finally, if you’re new to Piclo Flex or just haven’t logged in for a while there might be new features or processes that you are not familiar with. By approaching qualification and bidding with plenty of time, you can arrange 1-1’s with us to walk you through any areas you’re not certain of by emailing: support@picloflex.com.

2. Keep your assets up to date

If you haven’t logged into your Piclo Flex account recently we strongly recommend updating your asset details. You might have new assets to upload, existing assets might have changed status e.g. moving from planned to operational, and you can archive any assets you don’t need anymore to keep your map as clean and clear as possible.

By keeping your asset information up to date, you’ll be automatically notified when there are relevant flexibility competitions where your assets are located. Up to date asset information also ensures the DNOs technical assessment is as accurate as possible, reducing the risk that your (and their) time is wasted.

3. Use all the information available to you

Bidding and pricing

Flex Providers must enter competitive bids to win flexibility contracts and more information than ever before has been provided to help Flex Providers take advantage of these opportunities.

For the open competitions, SPEN and ENWL have provided pricing information to give Flex Providers a steer on bidding strategies. This comes in the form of availability and utilisation guide pricing from SPEN and maximum yearly budgets from ENWL. These can be found by looking at individual competitions on Piclo Flex.

Piclo also publishes historic competition and bidding data, providing transparency over what bids were accepted at what price in what location, as well as the DNO’s reason for rejecting unsuccessful bids. This is a very useful resource for Flex Providers to understand previous bidding results and you can download the files here:

Other resources

4. Get in touch!

If you have any questions, want more information about flexibility competitions or have queries about your assets and how to use Piclo Flex you can always get in touch. We are happy to arrange a 1-1 with any Flex Provider, email: support@picloflex.com

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