Dr Randall Bowen, managing director, Voltalis UK says that demand response’s ramp up will fortify UK buildings and infrastructure.
With efforts behind the national energy transition ramping up and property owners and managers needing to make budgets stretch further, we are fast approaching a crunch point for achieving clean, reliable and affordable power.
In fact, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) estimates that 10-12 gigawatts of demand side response, quadruple current levels, is needed to effectively achieve national clean energy goals.
This may seem daunting, but recent moves from Ofgem have created encouraging conditions for demand response technology to speed up the UK’s energy transition and put the 16 gigawatts of largely untapped flexible load in the UK’s existing building stock to work.
Harnessing the flexibility potential of UK buildings today is well within our collective grasp.
Optimising energy cost and consumption
Supporting the energy transition shouldn’t require bearing additional costs. Rolling out demand response technology, which can be installed in residential and commercial buildings at no cost, not only helps direct users modulate energy consumption during critical hours, but it can also help lower power prices for all energy users and decarbonise “peak load” periods for grids.
The potential impact of this is significant, with a study from Compass Lexecon shows that a 10 GW DR capacity, as projected for France in 2030, allows to decrease the price by circa 40€/MWh for the highest peak price.
Consider the multiplier effect on the bottom lines of companies with high energy needs, such as university campuses, hotels and offices. It’s a compelling commercial case for integrating flexibility into existing systems, without dramatically increasing costs for the power system and energy consumers.
Enhancing ESG credentials
For businesses and households that are able to think beyond cost, ensuring positive environmental impact is key.
Decent progress has been made to stay compliant with UK green building standards and future energy performance requirements, whether that’s through adding renewables to a buildings’ energy mix, installing heat pumps or retrofitting.
However, it’s quicker and much more effective to reduce energy consumption than it would be to retrofit existing building stock en-masse. The UK must evolve its mindset of fabric-first overhauls to one where technology plays a greater role in energy efficiency.
Electrical appliances in existing buildings represent a major resource of distributed energy resources and offer the largest source of flexible energy. With simple installs of demand response technology, it’s possible to speed up ESG progress and reduce reliance on national infrastructure upgrades, such as adding more pylons to the National Grid.
Improving data and insights
Another major factor enabling demand response’s mass adoption is innovative developments in technology itself. Today, buildings must not only become more energy efficient, they must also become more intelligent.
Proving decarbonisation progress is increasingly becoming a numbers and resource game. With competing priorities always ready to distract, automating processes and accessing accurate data to back up net zero success is crucial.
Occupants no longer have to manually switch off electrical sources in unused rooms. Cleantech dashboards have evolved to give building managers, sustainability leads and operational teams more control and data-led insight over usage and comfort levels.
Now, demand response technology can plug directly into existing electrical systems and be controlled via a mobile app, to help modulate energy usage which can save, on average, up to 15% on electricity costs.
This evolution to Demand Response 4.0, where AI and IoT are harnessed to aggregate scores of buildings' worth of energy to bring energy savings for all consumers, has already been demonstrated across Europe. The UK has the need and the conditions to scale nationally and lead globally.
Future-proofing assets, today
Ultimately, a clean power system for all can be made possible through energy assets – that is, commercial, public and residential buildings – that have already been paid for.
Currently, the UK has the right components for this to become a much-needed reality, but it’s now on building owners, engineers, energy managers and business leaders to champion these technologies.