National Grid opens bidding round for 2015 reserve capacity services

The National Grid Company, responsible for operating and balancing demands across the electricity transmission grid in the UK, has issued tenders for:

• demand side balancing reserve (where organisations agree to reduce demand on winter, weekday evenings in return for payment); and
• supplemental balancing reserve (where organisations with idle capacity are paid for availability).

The initiative is aimed at helping preserve supplies to customers during periods of high demand.

Each tender is looking to secure 50% of the 1800MW capacity requirement. There are also plans for further tenders next year for another 900MW of reserve, depending on the outcome of the current tender process.

The need for additional reserve capacity has become more critical this year with unexpected outages of several large power plants across the UK during the summer period.

In October, companies operating at 431 sites in Britain won contracts under the Demand Side Balancing Reserve for this winter.  This could save up to 319MW of capacity - around half of the capacity of a typical power plant in Britain - during peak times.

For more information, help or advice please contact Andrew Davison on 0191 211 7950.