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ESO
Reserve services
Please note: Given the challenges posed by COVID-19 we will be constantly reviewing our plans and several projects may be impacted. Click here to find out more.
At certain times of the day, we need access to sources of extra power in the form of either increased generation or demand reduction. This enables us to manage a greater than forecast electricity demand on Britain's transmission system. These additional power sources available to us are called 'reserve services'.
Different sources need different timescales in order to be ready to deliver the required service. In this section, we list reserve services according to their timescales (shortest timescales first):
Slow Reserve
Slow Reserve, separated into Negative Slow Reserve (NSR) and Positive Slow Reserve (PSR), will be the first of our series of new Reserve products.
Quick Reserve
Quick Reserve, separated into Negative Quick Reserve (NQR) and Positive Quick Reserve (PQR), is aimed primarily for reacting to pre-fault disturbances to restore the energy imbalance quickly.
