In the first of what will be a series of six-monthly updates, we are pleased to be able to share our latest Interim Trial Learning Report on our FUSION project – a flagship innovation project focused on trialling local demand-side flexibility in East Fife.
Whilst the trial only went live in September of this year, the report still provides valuable insights into our journey to achieving “go-live”, feedback from our aggregators and the platform provider themselves on their experience in successfully implementing the Universal Smart Energy Framework (USEF) that’s a big part of the project, and our learning objectives for phase 1 which the trial has been designed to address.
Ahead of delivery phase one of the project commencing in September, one of the key components of the project set up was the FUSION Flexibility Platform (FFP), to support delivery of flexibility trials in East Fife.
In collaboration with our project partners, we developed a series of functional requirements that we needed the FFP to meet – covering the USEF process and the role of the DSO amongst other factors.
Following our procurement process, we selected Opus One Solutions to provide us with the FFP and then worked with them to develop and test the platform ahead of our trial commencing. Read more about our launch of the first USEF-compliant flexibility market as part of that trial.
A number of objectives were set for Phase 1 of the project including; evaluating the feasibility, costs and benefits of implementing a common flexibility market, investigating a range of commercial mechanisms to encourage participation, how this approach could support the role of the Distribution System Operator, and crucially, how it can be integrated in grid operations. The trial was therefore designed to address these and a number of other critical factors, with outcomes then being taken forward into phase 2 to further develop the approach.
The learnings from Phase 1 of the trial will be evaluated in March 2022 and the project team will then be preparing for phase 2 commencing in April 2022 – addressing real congestion in East Fife.
Innovative solutions like this will be critical to us building the network of the future and achieving Net Zero. Flexibility in particular has the potential to make significant contributions to decarbonisation targets, with a recent Carbon Trust and Imperial College London report highlighting that the UK could save up to £40bn across the electricity system from now to 2050 by deploying flexibility technologies.
While the world’s focus is on climate change as Scotland hosts COP26, we’re proud to be able to showcase our own progress in driving forward emerging markets like this that will support the delivery of the energy transition.
We’ll be sharing more on project FUSION in the coming months, but in the meantime you can read the full Interim Trial Learnings Report here, and visit the links below for further information on the overall project:
• FUSION Annual Report
• Project FUSION webpage