Demand flexibility consists of two essential components：

1. It utilizes automatic control mechanisms to continually reshape a customer’s demand profile in a manner that either goes unnoticed by the customer, such as decoupling the timing of grid usage from actual end-use through energy storage, or has minimal impact on the customer’s experience, for instance, by shifting the timing of non-critical loads within customer-set parameter.
2. For customers connected to the grid, demand flexibility harnesses more refined rate structures, including time-of-use pricing, real-time pricing, demand charges, and distributed solar PV export pricing, to provide transparent retail price signals that either directly inform customers or are communicated through third-party aggregators. These signals monetize the capability of demand flexibility to lower costs for both customers and the grid.

In the past, the National Grid’s approach to managing increasing demand was reactive. This entailed, in the short term, utilizing “peaking” power plants during high-demand hours, which are temporarily activated and often rely on costly and environmentally unfriendly fuels like gas or diesel.

Over the long term, this reactive methodology led to the construction of more infrastructure: additional power stations, substations, and transmission and distribution lines.

However, today’s energy system necessitates a different tactic. Instead of considering demand as an immutable factor, the demand flexibility system (DFS) provides incentives for energy users to adopt alternative consumption patterns. In essence, it financially rewards individuals and businesses for altering their energy usage habits. This approach helps smooth out the peaks and valleys in demand, thereby reducing the reliance on peaking plants.

Demand-side flexibility can only be provided by controllable loads, such as smart distributed energy resources(DERs). The fact that their demand does not have to be met instantly, translates into flexibility:

Large-scale batteries are also vital in providing grid-scale flexibility. This works in the same way of charging and discharging electricity according to consumption patterns, but with larger amounts of stored energy.

Aggregating the flexibility of many DERs and bringing this flexibility to power markets can provide system-wide benefits. This is called Virtual Power Plants (VPP). Virtual power plants can be used to connect and trade energy between large-scale power plants, to pool EV capacity or to monetize flexibility in smaller-scale residential use cases. This must be combined with forecasts, price signals, asset measurements and constraints, dispatch set-point signals and more, which requires holistic energy management. The first step for this is creating a seamless and sophisticated connection between a local energy management system and the VPP so that all systems work in conjunction with, rather than against, each other. enjoyelec’s VPP platform forms the link between the market and the DERs.

You must have an electricity smart meter installed and your electricity provider has to offer the scheme. Most suppliers have signed up and do notify customers on the days they are taking part. You can check whether your supplier is taking part here, external

If you have not already been invited to take part, you can contact your supplier and ask to sign up to the scheme. Energy firms have different criteria for who can sign up and exactly how much they pay for saving energy.

Distributing the demand for electricity more evenly throughout the day brings about three significant advantages:

By participating in demand flexibility program and utilizing the tools provided, you can actively manage and reduce your electricity consumption.