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Balancing programme

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This programme was established to develop the balancing capabilities that the Electricity National Control Centre needs to deliver reliable and secure system operation, facilitate competition everywhere and meet our ambition for net-zero carbon operability. To date, the programme has done extensive work to modify our existing capabilities to meet changing market conditions and customer requirements.

However, in their current form, our existing capabilities will not be able to meet all future challenges. Additional investment is required to develop new capabilities that can meet changing requirements. We are modernising and transforming our balancing capabilities and associated platforms. This will ensure that we have the vital flexibility to facilitate future changes, both expected and emerging, across the industry.

In line with our RIIO-2 plan, we have assessed what is required to transform our systems whilst maintaining our existing systems and enabling market changes to continue. We now have a better understanding of the complexity of change required and the large number of dependencies involved in transitioning from old to new systems.

We undertook a strategic review of the systems used to support our balancing capability between April and May 2022. This was undertaken collaboratively to ensure that our plans and delivery roadmaps meet our RIIO-2 strategic objectives, minimise balancing costs, deliver consumer benefits and create a foundation for future market changes and reform.

One of the key outputs from this review was our co-created roadmap. We will provide updates on how we are delivering against this through our ongoing engagement.

Download our roadmap 

Ongoing engagement

Find all the latest updates from our in-person workshops and transformation programme increments. Our next workshop will be held in London on Thursday 9 February, and you can register your interest by using the link below. 

Register for our next workshop

As agreed through our strategic review with industry between April and June 2022, we will provide regular updates on our website and look to host in person events every quarter to keep our stakeholders informed of our progress.

Theses updates will focus on how we are working towards delivering our co-created roadmap, ensuring we are transparent with the costs, risks and benefits associated with our delivery plan. The in-person workshops offer a great space for collaborating with our stakeholders, ensuring we continue to gain valuable insight and feedback from across the industry into what we are delivering.

Quarterly workshops

In October we held our first Balancing Programme quarterly update at our offices in Wokingham. We gave stakeholders a recap of the strategic review we ran earlier in the year, before providing updates on how we are working towards delivering the co-created roadmap.

In the afternoon we held a breakout session, with several stalls focusing on the different areas of the programme and across the ESO. The video shows our facilitator talking through how the day worked with one of our stakeholders who attended the event, gaining valuable insight into how they thought the day went.

Watch the October quarterly workshop

Programme increment updates

The programme increments provide visibility on the progress being made on transforming the platforms the ENCC are currently using today. They will be published to our website each quarter, with more in-depth insight being provided at our in-person workshops.

Download the Balancing Programme PI4

Strategic capability review

Read the details of our strategic capability review which was held between April and June 2022. It was undertaken to help us ensure that we meet our RIIO-2 objectives, minimise balancing costs, deliver consumer benefits and create a foundation for future market changes and reform.

Strategic capability review
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Join our Storage Stakeholder Group

We are establishing the Storage Stakeholder Group to ensure we work collaboratively and align internal balancing enhancements with industry expectations.

We will work together to understand current pain points of market participants, so we can agree and plan enhancements for the future of storage in line with the balancing programmes roadmap.

This group will meet on a monthly basis, and will have a mix of remote and in-person events.

We welcome your input to ensure we develop plans that are ambitious, achievable, and have considered the priorities of our stakeholders. If you would like to join us, please email us at [email protected].

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Get in touch

Contact the programme team.

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Open letter

Read our letter to industry.

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Read our latest Q&A

A full list of all questions and answers sent in to the strategic review.

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