Insights / Make the most of your flexible assets

Fixed, risk-free savings: make the most of your flexible assets

31st March 2021

As the UK shifts to a distributed and decentralised system, businesses can support the National Grid with flexibility from their generation assets, storage assets, or by simply reducing their level of power demand.

At Drax, our Electric Assets team can help you benefit from fixed and risk-free savings throughout your energy supply contract.

Fixed, risk-free savings: make the most of your flexible assets - Hero Image

A changing energy landscape

Ten years ago, fossil fuels provided three quarters of Britain’s electricity - 20 times more than renewables. As the UK moves towards net zero targets for 2050, we’ve seen the demise of fossil fuels and renewable generation increasing at a rapid pace. Last year, renewables overtook fossil fuels for the first time to become Britain’s biggest source of electricity over the whole year.

However, with increasing renewables, comes increasing price volatility in the energy market. Zero carbon, low- cost generation options like wind and solar are hard to forecast because they’re intermittent and more unpredictable. This also makes it harder to keep the grid in balance, which in turn creates a greater system balancing cost for all.

The energy landscape’s changing in other ways, too. Consumers are now using power more efficiently, and consumption patterns will keep changing as new technologies - such as electric vehicles and chargers - place new demands on the grid.

Is there opportunity with flexibility?

As the UK energy landscape shifts, the National Grid will need to increase incentives for Demand Side Response (DSR) and storage to support system balancing. DSR implies that energy users increase, reduce or shift their electricity demand in response to the electricity grid being out of balance. This could be through business operations and appliances, onsite generation or battery storage, for example. That means businesses can take advantage by monetising any flexibility they may have.

We’ve got the data and expertise to offer you a risk-free return for whatever flexible electricity demand and use we can find within your business or self-generation assets. And we’ll do all the hard work for you.

Optimise with Drax Electric Assets

Our Electric Assets team works with our customers through a full optimisation process. First, we’ll carry out a desktop energy flexibility audit. This includes researching your industry sector’s demand patterns, your consumption data, and then conducting an on-site survey to assess the flexibility of every asset within your business.

By completing these assessments and sharing the results, we can help you see how much it’s costing you to run your business without optimising your electric assets. This also gives you a clear view of the fixed savings and value you can enjoy as we deliver our optimisation process.

Working together, we’ll identify processes that can change without having a detrimental effect on your core business processes. Like turning down refrigeration or heating processes while keeping within temperature bonds, for example.

Different assets offer different ways of generating revenue from various flexibility value streams, such as wholesale trading, cost avoidance, or grid system stability. We’ll work with you to make sure we’re using the right assets in the best possible way. This gives you access to all possible revenue streams, without the need for complicated additional contracts.

The result, once you’re on supply with us, is that we’ll deliver a fixed monthly saving that’s fully integrated within your bill. You’ll start getting the discount on your energy from the first month of the agreement.

Sound good? Opt-in for optimisation - get in touch below.

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