Increasingly, organisations are seeing the opportunities in flexibility optimisation (also known as Demand-Side Response, Demand-Side Flexibility, or Demand-Side Management) to unlock opportunities to access cost savings, earn revenue and take greater control over their electricity consumption. 

However, to have a better idea of the opportunities that are available to your organisation through flexibility optimisation, it’s essential that you take a considered, holistic approach and leverage energy as a strategic asset.

Here are a few key considerations for ensuring your flexibility optimisation is truly aligned within your energy strategy, to unlock the most value:

1. Define your goals

Having a clear aim within your organisation’s energy strategy, and taking a holistic view in your approach, can ensure you’re maximising the opportunities available as you work towards these goals. 

These goals might include: 

• Controlling your non-commodity costs 
• Taking advantage of market opportunities through commodity trading. 
• Unlocking new revenue streams through flexibility markets. 
• Ensuring that your organisation is self-reliant and resilient, through utilisation of on-site generation and management technologies. 
• Maximising these on-site technologies, and accessing a significantly improved return on investment for these technologies.
• Supporting a sustainable, resilient energy system by adjusting electricity usage to align with lower price periods. These periods may also be when the grid’s carbon intensity is less, maximising the use of renewable generation on the grid, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and working to tackle the effects of climate change. 

2. Understand your electricity usage 

By understanding the pattern of your electricity usage, leveraging data-driven insights around your operations, you can then consider the impact of installing any on-site technologies or adopting flexibility optimisation activities. Your organisation will then be better informed and able to understand the opportunities within your energy strategy.  

Every organisation‘s needs will vary slightly, and with careful consideration of where you are now and what changes you can make to your operations in the future, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions that will supercharge your energy strategy.

3. Secure the right contract for you 

With a thorough understanding of your operations, electricity consumption and goals, you can work with your electricity supplier to build the right mechanisms into your organisation’s electricity contracts to maximise flexibility optimisation opportunities. 

If you do not tell your supplier otherwise and update them about any future changes, they may assume your electricity consumption profile will remain the same as over the last 12 months. If they have this knowledge, they can help make sure your contract is future-proof and has provisions for change as your energy strategy evolves, whether that be changes in consumption levels and usage profiles, the technologies you install, or your procurement strategy. Through communication, you can negotiate a contract that supports your planned technologies and complements your flexibility optimisation activities, so that you can unlock their full opportunities. 

4. Assess opportunities for flexibility optimisation 

Your flexibility optimisation partner can help you to assess any opportunities for deployment of new on-site technologies, such as Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and on-site solar PV, to unlock more opportunities for flexibility optimisation. However, you don’t need to install new on-site assets to optimise your usage; by working with your flexibility optimisation partner you can assess the flexible opportunity within existing on-site assets, such as thermal stores, Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and building management systems (including HVAC – Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), to align electricity usage with the system’s needs. 

By bringing your technologies, usage and flexibility optimisation efforts together within your wider energy strategy, you can maximise how you generate, use, store, or sell your electricity to unlock greater value and help improve return on investment. 

5. Identify your essential partners and work collaboratively  

As the energy system evolves, so do the partnerships we need to help navigate it. It’s essential that stakeholders work collaboratively to maximise your flexibility optimisation efforts and accelerate you towards your goals. Depending on your aims and assets, this can include energy consultants, technology installers, flexibility optimisers, your electricity supplier, and your in-house experts. 

It’s important that you engage and communicate with these stakeholders about any changes planned within your operations, to ensure effective implementation, and that all parts of your holistic energy strategy complement each other and work together seamlessly.

By taking a considered approach, your organisation can maximise opportunities from flexibility optimisation and create a holistic energy strategy that works for you. 

We know that to support a grid that is powered by more intermittent renewable energy sources, we need to help our customers use electricity more intelligently and sustainably. With the right flexibility optimisation partner, who can guide you through important considerations for your organisation, this can be made easy, enabling you to unlock value from supporting the energy transition – all without impacting your organisation’s operations. 

As both a renewable electricity supplier* and flexibility optimiser, and with our electricity expertise and market knowledge, we’re perfectly placed to help your organisation take advantage of new revenue streams, in a way that suits your organisation’s needs and supports a decarbonised grid.

For more information, click here, or get in touch with our team of experts at energytransition@brytenergy.co.uk or on 0330 053 8620.