‘Supply and demand must be better managed to balance a more distributed energy system’

That’s the suggestion from Stuart Lacey, CEO of ElectraLink, who spoke to Energy Live News about the changing face of the energy sector

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The point at which the energy sector has to better manage supply and demand in order to allow the system to balance at a regional level is accelerating towards us.

That’s the suggestion from Stuart Lacey, CEO of ElectraLink, who spoke to Energy Live News about the changing face of the energy sector and how it has been affected by the coronavirus.

The boss of ElectraLink, which acts as a data hub for the UK energy market, said this was vital in order to maintain stability in terms of the electricity delivered to homes and businesses as generation becomes increasingly distributed, rather than operating at a centralised national level.

He noted this trend is being driven by an increase in unpredictable renewable generation and a reduction in overall demand: “That point at which the interaction between variable supply and increasingly unpredictable demand intersect and you do get instability is now upon us.”

Mr Lacey added that the Electricity System Operator (ESO) needs to continue to be more innovative in the way it manages demand and suggested distribution companies need to continue to be more innovative in their use of flexibility services.

He said: “The only way you can manage that complexity with that level of granularity is through automated machine-to-machine interfaces using a whole variety of data sources, not just ElectraLink’s but others, in order to automatically manage what’s going to become a much more complex marketplace.”

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