Crowdflex

Building upon two pioneering projects (CrowdFlex: NIA and the Domestic Reserve Scarcity Trail); CrowdFlex: SIF will clarify the role domestic flexibility can play in addressing the system challenge of decarbonisation.

As more renewable generation is added to the network, it will become increasingly difficult to balance supply and demand. Domestic flexibility provides a huge opportunity during this energy transition to build a smart flexible energy system by enabling consumers to act as a new source of flexibility on the network.

CrowdFlex explores how domestic flexibility can be used in grid operations to help align demand to generation, improve coordination across the network, reduce stress on the system, while empowering consumers to be active players in reducing their energy bills via new tariffs and incentives.

Three key objectives of CrowdFlex are:

1. to understand and align ESO and DNO requirements for domestic flexibility services and develop commercial frameworks suitable for the statistical nature of flexibility
2. to identify the technology capability and consumer behaviour parameters to explore in a future large scale consumer trial
3. to understand how the statistical nature of flexibility can be developed into reliable modelling of domestic demand and flexibility

Together these objectives aim to establish domestic flexibility as a reliable energy and grid management resource.

Dr Nina Klein, National Grid ESO said:

Right now, domestic flexibility is largely untapped due to limited knowledge on consumer behaviour and challenges in the existing market and regulatory landscape.  

The CrowdFlex project will advance our understanding of this emerging source of flexibility, helping us explore ways to deploy domestic flexibility for the benefit of both the energy system and electricity consumers.