balancing costs

  • Energy storage and flexibility

    “Fixing” Balancing Costs

    The challenge of keeping the national transmission system balanced and stable in real-time is becoming increasingly challenging and expensive. Demand is becoming more unpredictable alongside a generation fleet that is both increasingly intermittent and increasingly distributed. Unsurprisingly, costs have risen. In this 'Chart of the week', we take a look...

  • Business supply and services

    Balancing costs exceed £200mn for three consecutive months

    High underlying commodity and carbon costs haven’t only impacted costs in the wholesale market. From April 2021 to the end of October 2021, balancing costs on the electricity transmission system have totalled £1.29bn. This represents a £301.88mn (30.6%) increase in costs over the same period in 2020, where total costs...

  • Energy storage and flexibility

    Chart of the week | Increasing electricity balancing costs and an increasing System Operator role

    Last week saw the publication of Ofgem's review of GB energy system operation. This makes recommendations that the roles and functions of the electricity and gas system operators need to change in light of net zero. In this week's 'Chart of the week', I wanted to focus on one aspect...