We were delighted to be joined by such an ensemble of industry experts, resulting in two lively roundtables on the topics of “unlocking DSO flexibility across Europe” and “the developing role of Active Network Management”.
With too many questions from the audience to answer on the day, we thought we’d follow up with some of the key insights we took from the afternoon’s polls and sit down with James Johnston, CEO and co-founder, to answer from a Piclo perspective some of the questions that weren’t covered.
Part 1 discusses the results of the four polls taken throughout the e-conference. To watch the e-conference recording, click here.
DSO flexibility markets vs. Active Network Management familiarity
The first insight we took from the afternoon was the audience’s greater familiarity with DSO flexibility markets compared to Active Network Management (ANM).
Here the poll results showed that in comparison to DSO flexibility markets, where only 3% of the audience were unfamiliar with the term and 50% “actively involved”, 13% of the audience were unfamiliar with ANM - categorising themselves as “ANM-what?” - and just a quarter were actively involved.
The poll results also reflect the wider discussion about terminology ambiguity that occurred during the ANM roundtable.
Here, the lack of agreement and understanding in the UK between different concepts such as ANM, flexible power and DERMs (distributed energy resource management) was discussed by the panel and audience. In particular, it was noted how the concept of ANM is limited by being associated only with one area of what it means to actively manage a network - streamlined “flexible connections” for new generators - despite the industry’s understanding of flexibility having greatly improved over the past two decades.
Instead, utility DERMS has now become understood internationally as the suite of technologies that enables the management, control and integration of distributed energy onto networks.
DSO Market Progression
The poll results also painted a largely encouraging picture of the audience’s perspective on when commercial pilots for flexibility are likely to be established, with over 70% estimating this will happen within two years.
The perspectives on standardisation across Europe were also interesting.
Here, 50% of the audience expected a few common standards and approaches to develop. However, close to 30% indicated that every country would develop their own approach to flexibility markets despite the overarching regulations from the Clean Energy Package.