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Balancing Mechanism Wider Access

As the Electricity System Operator (ESO), our vision is to meet the future needs of the electricity system by making the most of all resources available on the system in a flexible and economic way. 

It is our job to operate Great Britain’s electricity network to ensure that supply and demand are balanced and power flows across the network safely and reliably. We are seeing a transformation in GB’s energy mix as we move towards a decarbonised energy system. With this change, we are facing new challenges in balancing the GB electricity system while also delivering value to energy consumers.

To overcome these challenges, we need to maximise the resources we have available on the system today and in the future. Our service providers are key to helping us manage these challenges, which is why we want to better help them to help us balance the GB system in the most cost effective way. After listening to these providers, we want to widen access to the Balancing Mechanism (BM), Great Britain’s core flexibility market.

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Prequalification Portal

First you will need to create an account in Salesforce, the below will take you to the registration page.

Register a Salesforce account 

You can then login page on the prequalification portal to build and submit your application.

Login to Salesforce


Entering the Balancing Mechanism

We have created a guidance document to support providers who wish to enter the Balancing Mechanism. It explains the different routes you can go through and the processes you will need follow. 

Guidance and Supporting Documents

Guidance and Supporting Documents

This section contains the guidance document for entering the Balancing Mechanism and several supporting documents.

Published Sort ascending Name
24 Oct 2022NGESO - BM Registration Guidance Document
31 Mar 2022Operational Metering Overview - Small BMUs
7 Sep 2021Specification for Wider Access Application Programming Interface (WA API)
29 Mar 2021VLP_Supplier High Level Process Guidance Document
30 Dec 2020Communications Standards (Issue 7)
9 Nov 2020Overview of the Wider Access API 9 Nov 2020
23 Sep 2020 GB Wider Access API Phase 1 Go-Live successful - 18 Sep 2020
3 Jun 2020GB BM Wider Access - review and update - 3 June 2020
14 Jan 2020Update for Market Participants - TERRE testing invitation - 13 Jan 2019
17 Dec 2019BM Wider Access Guidance v.3
11 Dec 2019Update for Market Participants - WA Go-live - 11 Dec 2019
3 Dec 2019Update for Market Participants – WA Go-live – 3 Dec 2019
22 Nov 2019Update for Market Participants - WA Go-live - 22 Nov 2019
25 Oct 2019IT Change Forum WA/TERRE Updates October 2019
15 Oct 2019Update for Market Participants - Operational Metering - October 2019
25 Sep 2019Salesforce Guidance Document - Feb 2019
3 Sep 2019Wider Access and TERRE - Q and A
3 Sep 2019Update for Market Participants - WA and TERRE - September 2019
6 Aug 2019Update for Market Participants - WA and TERRE - July 2019
19
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