Balancing programme
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.
Ongoing engagement
Find all the latest updates from our in-person workshops and transformation programme increments.
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.
Our next event will be held in June, to receive all programme updates and details of how to register for our events please join our mailing list at the bottom of this page.
Quarterly workshops
February 2023 workshop
In February we welcomed stakeholders to our latest workshop in London. The day started with updates on the progress the team has made in delivering the co-created roadmap, showing how improvements being made in existing systems are helping bring in new services, as well delivering benefits to dispatch efficiency for control room engineers.
The afternoon session looked to collaborate with stakeholders, seeking their feedback and insight into the key future deliverables of the team. Topics included the latest demo of the new Open Balancing Platform that is due to be deployed this year, as well as open discussions on the future dispatch optimiser and how we could improve energy forecasting.
October 2022 workshop
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.
Join our Storage Stakeholder Group
Following feedback from stakeholders at our workshops, we are establishing Stakeholder Groups to ensure we work collaboratively and align internal balancing enhancements with industry expectations.
We will be setting up specific stakeholder groups to allow for more focussed discussions on a variety of topic areas. These include:
- Technology
- Optimisation
- Forecasting
- Storage
We welcome your input to ensure we develop plans that are ambitious, achievable, and have considered the priorities of our stakeholders.
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.
Sign up to receive the latest updates from the programme, including details of our quarterly workshops.
Find a full list of all questions and answers from our quarterly workshops.
Email us if you have any queries.