Energy flexibility project for Lincoln live
Orion is pleased to announce that its partnership with electricity retailer Ecotricity to deliver an energy flexibility solution for the Lincoln area is now live.
Following a successful launch last month, the trial period of the project will run through to September, delivering 100kW of demand response this year, growing to 500kW next winter.
Orion’s network region is growing, with Lincoln seeing large scale residential growth, which is raising the demand for electricity in the area. Traditionally that growth in demand would require more electricity network to be built to cater for a peak of a short duration. However, by utilising batteries in the community, Orion is looking to reduce network demand at key times.
“Flexibility is a broad term when it comes to electricity, and it encompasses a lot of different solutions. In the case of this project, we’re using batteries to enable households to store additional power supply, that can then be released into our network when it’s needed, for instance at peak times like winter mornings and evenings when people are using a lot of power,” says The Orion Group Chief Executive Nigel Barbour.
Flexibility support from batteries reduces peak electricity demand in the area in 2024 and 2025 and could also potentially be used to lessen the impact of an outage where these batteries are installed.
“This is an important project for us to create opportunities for our customers to participate in flexibility, while helping us facilitate decarbonisation and network hosting capacity at the lowest cost to our community,” says Nigel.
“Another reason this is so important is that it creates value for people because it allows our customers to be more engaged and active. Being able to dispatch in a local area is what people are asking for. It’s valuable for us too, as we’re building our capability to work on innovative energy projects. The project also allows us to streamline our processes and we’re excited to share lessons learned with other electricity distribution businesses.”
Orion partnered with Ecotricity following a competitive procurement process to seek a solution to defer traditional network build that could reduce peak demand in the area. Ecotricity’s proposal involves a primarily residential-based battery solution.
Ecotricity are an electricity retailer with around 3,000 customers on the Orion network. Their flexibility platform, powered by Robotron, is used to reduce loads at peak times, particularly during the colder months from May to October, and to export power back into the network where possible.
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