Load Management and Demand Response

Ameresco can help you participate in Balancing Services and Demand Response programmes offered by National Grid and distribution companies who will pay you to become more flexible in the way in which you use electricity on-site, and use generators to help them balance the network.

Use your generators and flexible load capability to generate income

Ameresco will help you generate revenue from energy assets like diesel generators, CHP and the ability to turn off load through flexible operations – increasing cashflow, lowering carbon emissions and contributing to making the national grid more secure.

What are balancing services?

Significant volumes of electricity, unlike oil or gas, cannot be stored economically, leading to imbalances between supply and demand. As a result, the UK system operator, National Grid has to continually balance electricity supplies and consumer demand to provide a reliable supply and prevent damage to the supply infrastructure such as power lines, transformers and generators.

National Grid takes two types of balancing actions: energy imbalance actions and system imbalance actions. Energy imbalance actions address mismatches between supply and demand at a national level and system imbalance actions address local or regional constraints or short term variations in supply and demand.

How do I get started with demand response?

You can get started with Triad Management, Frequency Response, Short Term Operating Reserve and other programmes either on your own if you have sufficient electricity volume, or participate with others in a basket run by an Aggregator such as Ameresco.

Sites that can meet the minimum requirements for participating in any program, which are on the order of 3MW to 5 MW can directly agree contracts with National Grid, while smaller sites will need to partner with an Aggregator.

In either case, a partner such as Ameresco can help understand the programme requirements and put in place systems and processes that comply with National Grid’s requirements for response times and delivery for contracted services, or is operated during the right time periods to secure savings. For example, you need to consider carrying out some or all of the following actions:

  • Change operating procedures to meet the needs of demand response programmes.
  • Enable the retrieval of metering data from generator control panels remotely.
  • Install specialist metering and control equipment or upgrading generator control panels to enable remote access and data retrieval.
  • Apply for appropriate permissions and network reinforcement requirements from the Distribution Network Operator to operate in parallel with the network and export any surplus.
  • Upgrade switch gear and infrastructure to enable a quicker response and deliver more of the installed capacity.
  • Ensure that services can be safely turned off in response to an instruction without compromising operating performance.