Flexible futures: New tool calculates benefits of demand response and energy optimisation services

Businesses across the UK and US can draw on a new tool to calculate how they could benefit financially from integrating demand response and energy optimisation services into their business operations, as more and more firms gear up to participate in emerging flexible grid markets.

Named the Energy Opportunity Calculator, the free to access tool was designed by energy tech specialist GridBeyond and released last week. It enables industrial and commercial businesses to calculate what they could earn and save through demand response and energy optimisation services.

Energy users enter three pieces of information - location, industry, and electricity consumption in MW, kWh, MWh, or electricity spend - into the calculator, which it uses to compute the financial benefits that could be on offer for a given site.

The calculated benefits are split into two sections, revenues and savings, with the revenues based on payments from demand response and capacity market services, and the savings arising from typical energy efficiency improvements, price optimisation, and operational efficiencies.

The calculator uses the typical percentage of flexibility for the user's industry, the typical services and programmes available to that industry, and the value derived from those programmes to generate the results, GridBeyond said.

Each user can then download a bespoke, personalised report containing further detail on their results, with additional information on the services they can participate in, the assets typically found in their industry, and an overview of their market, the firm added.

"In our mission to simplify the complex energy market, the Energy Opportunity Calculator provides industrial and commercial businesses the possibility to understand their potential earnings and savings without undertaking a full audit," explained Michael Phelan, CEO at GridBeyond.

"We found that, from an end user's perspective, the visibility of a site's value in the energy markets is often clouded. Service providers talk extensively about value per MW, but don't necessarily have the knowledge of application to ascertain the amount of flexibility actually available within particular industries and the breadth of services both within and outside of DSR [Demand Side Response]."

Founded in Dublin in 2007, GridBeyond operates an energy trading platform that brings together balancing services, capacity, smart tariffing, energy trading, peak avoidance, and energy optimisation. Designed to help businesses access low-carbon energy and optimise energy efficiency, the firm claims it can help both decarbonise and digitise the electricity system.

The Carbon Trust has calculated that digitilisation could deliver savings of up to £40bn for the British economy by 2050, primarily by helping to unlock a smart and flexible energy system.

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• Topics
• Energy
• Infrastructure
• Technology
• energy optimisation
• GridBeyond
• Carbon Trust
• digital economy
• demand side response
• demand side
• flexible energy
• Energy Efficiency