it's my opinion that these Demand Flexibility trials are currently targeting the wrong segment of the energy market.
 

I don’t know whether some illustrations would help understanding, but I’ll have a go anyway.
  

Looking at today’s generation mix (where our electricity comes from), I see that at 17:30 (the middle of both the 4-7PM and 5-6PM slots we’ve been targeting), 90% of it came from fossil fuels, almost 15% of that from coal. 

  

 

If in midwinter, the top of the demand curve rises above available capacity, there will be power cuts. In any case, anything we consumers can do to shift usage away from the peak will benefit us all, if it means reducing the amount of fossil fuels - especially coal - needed to generate the electricity we consume. 

Which segment of the energy market do you suggest should be making these adjustments?   

 

The donut is interesting as the percentages are carbon rather than kWh related. Coal was 1.44GW at 5.30. That is a staggering amount of carbon for a single coal power site.

All but one coal powered site closed for good over the summer.

Be good to see Ratcliffe-on-Soar close September 2024.

Hey @Lucky2, 

Good question! 

Customers will get a post-event email after every event (lead time up to a week after) but credits will be applied only once a month by adding up all events in the previous month. The last November event could be any day up to and including Thursday 30th November - latest case scenario. 

An energy market segment that is regularly using more that 0.1 or 0.2 kWh.

You don’t need graphs and charts to appreciate that one domestic customer who can move 1 kWh is the equivalent of 10 low users moving 0.1 kWh each. (or 2 moving 0.5kWh each).

At the moment, from what we can see here at least, those domestic customers being engaged in the DFS domestic trials appear to be low electricity users.

They need to somehow get more of the higher use domestic customers engaged/involved, those who are using more and so can shift more.

It may just be a target-market issue.
Or it may be that we are getting a one sided view on this forum.
It would be interesting to know if OVO invited higher domestic use customers to PM+ as well as just the low users (many already on Power Move ‘standard’) that we see on this thread?

I think the posts and OVO customers are definitely skewed.

Most of the posts are low users anyway, who are also already even lower in the peak period due to Power Move which is specific to OVO.

350MH was shifted nationwide in the trial scheme last year when even less people could take part in the DFS.

Here is an example of mine from last year. The sessions were not all 1 hour.

So we will get a better idea nationwide in April when all sessions have been run.

It is impossible to draw any conclusions from a handful of ovo posts who are already taking part in power move.

The expectation is that not everyone will or needs to take part in the emergency sessions but most  user can help however small in an emergency.

The more people who take part in the trial, the less will have have to be spent on infrastructure to cope with emergencies.

10s of billions is due to be spent upgrading transmission and distribution systems that is going to appear on our bills.

Not all changes we make personally are going to save us large amounts of money in the short term.