The Secretary of State, Greg Clark, launched today the Department of Business Energy & Industrial Strategy and Ofgem Call for Evidence on Smart Flexible Energy Systems. BEAMA has been working with the Smart Energy team in BEIS to inform and develop the content of this and fully support the direction this is moving the industry in. We are encouraged to see how well the departments have grasped the complexity of this engineering and market challenge and fully support the release of this call for evidence.
BEAMA views this as a business critical consultation and will be responding in full with contributions from all our associated member groups, and we will be meeting with BEIS as this response develops.
This consultation forms part of BEIS and Ofgem’s commitment to build a 21st century energy infrastructure, and this call for evidence demonstrates how BEIS and Ofgem are working together to ensure our energy system can respond to the latest challenges, and take advantage of the opportunities offered by new innovative technologies and services.
BEAMA has always supported the fact that smart, flexible energy systems will offer benefits to the consumer and the whole energy systems. The technology is ready, we just need to regulatory and market design framework to support the deployment of low carbon technologies and enable the value of flexibility in the system to be extracted.
BEAMA’s CEO Howard Porter said ‘this call for evidence will mark a significant step in the work our industry has been doing to elevate discussions on market and supply chain design to ensure the market for low carbon and smart technologies that enable flexibility on the system can be developed in the UK. I will be making this a priority for BEAMA in the coming weeks to respond to and engage all our members. A lot of work has been done in the UK over the past few years, especially with the investment in innovation and demonstration programs through the LCNF, NIA and NIC. It is now time to harness all the learning and scale up deployment of new technology that has both a system and customer benefit. We have seen great interest in this sector with our international colleagues and if we get the market structure right in the UK we will be able to support a flourishing UK industry for this market and build on our export success’.
BEIS report with this call for evidence that ‘over the period to 2050, studies have shown that a flexible energy system could deliver up to £40bn in cumulative net savings by helping us to build less power generation, turn off generation less when it exceeds demand, avoid the high cost of significantly reinforcing our energy networks, and reduce the cost of balancing our energy system in real time. This can help to ensure the UK has a secure, affordable and clean energy system now and in the future, while enabling growth in all parts of the country’.
To download the call for evidence documents click the link below
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/call-for-evidence-a-smart-flexible-energy-system
