Demand side management: creating revenue from energy flexibility

An increasing share of renewables will give rise to new opportunities for large industries when it comes to demand side management. With our help, this will not only support sustainability but also makes good business sense.

With large industries, demand side management is often considered unfeasible. Understandably, control of mission critical assets is not easily given away to aggregators. There are however plenty of opportunities for large industries to keep control over their assets and still benefit from the opportunities that arise from flexibility in energy demand or production:

Incidental demand side management: commercial dispatch

The general philosophy behind commercial dispatch is to extend the usage of your generating assets to not only supply your own processes with electricity, but also supply the grid when prices are sufficiently high. By bringing together market prices, ramp up capacity, expected demand and other relevant parameters in a real time overview, you will be able to act on market opportunities even on a small timescale.

Some energy intensive industrial processes such as electrolysis  and compression can also be used for commercial dispatch, because they are generally highly flexible in nature. The use of production buffers could for example create possibilities to temporarily ramp down electricity demand, while still meeting contracted supply levels. Seizing opportunities on the intraday or imbalance market can thus be approached from both a generation and a consumption point of view.

Structural demand side management: ancillary services

Transmission system operators increasingly require support in stabilising the grid. Requirements for delivering ancillary services differ between TSOs, but generally the possibilities range from continuous grid frequency support to incidental stability support in exceptional situations, each creating different revenues. Which ancillary services can be delivered by your operations should be evaluated by offsetting the flexibility of your processes against the requirements of the TSO.

Capitalise your energy flexibility

At Energy21 we believe every large energy user has the possibility to create revenues from their energy operation rather than simply being a cost driver.

Contact Thomas Crabtree via +31 6 3085 2747 to discuss your challenges and opportunities, or reach out to Energy21.