Draft guidance for distributor involvement in the flexibility services market

As indicated in our Market Brief newsletter last month, we’re resuming our work on the draft ‘Guidance for distributors involved in the flexibility services market’. Click here to view the draft guidance.

To help us complete our analysis of feedback from our workshop in June last year, we’re now inviting workshop attendees to share any lessons learnt or updated views since then through a short online survey. All survey responses will be analysed alongside the feedback we received through the June workshop. Here is a summary of the feedback we received in the workshop.

We are taking this step as there may be new insights from existing flexibility trials or other similar developments. We’re also aware of new retail offers, including EV charging and water heating load management, and the liquidation of SolarZero may have relevance to this work

The survey provides space to share additional feedback or insights on the topics discussed in the workshop. These are:

  • whether the principles are comprehensive
  • what constitutes flexibility for the purposes of the guidance; acknowledging there are likely to be boundary cases that are useful for the guidance to work through
  • the extent of the Authority’s expectations, eg, regarding staff working across flexibility services and regulated electricity distribution services (as discussed under principle 3)
  • whether the principles are likely to create material unintended implementation costs or problems for distributors and, if so, how we might adjust them to have a more proportionate impact
  • how we can monitor the benefits from the guidance, including what record-keeping, disclosures and assurances we may seek from distributors.

The purpose of the guidance is to minimise the risk – real or perceived – of distributors using their natural monopoly advantage to inhibit others entering the market. Addressing this risk will support a competitive flexibility services market for more efficient and cost-effective use of the distribution network, putting downward pressure on the overall system costs we all pay for via our power bills.

Thank you for your continued interest and involvement in this project. Once we have collated information through the survey, we will complete our analysis of all feedback and decide next steps.

Cancel