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Company name: Flexitricity Limited

Headquarters: Edinburgh, Scotland

Web site: www.flexitricity.com

Operational since: 2004

Executive spokespeople:

Dr. Alastair Martin, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

Ron Ramage, Chief Executive Officer

David Sigsworth, Chairman

Company summary: Flexitricity Ltd. created and now operates the first, largest and most advanced smart grid system in the UK, bringing revenue to UK businesses, increasing asset reliability, reducing national CO2 emissions and helping to secure energy supplies.

Technology platform: Flexitricity’s smart grid provides Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR), the most important category of fast-acting generation or demand-reduction capacity, which is held ready for National Grid to keep the electricity system stable during times of system stress. Flexitricity’s live, operational service is available every day to National Grid. Flexitricity’s smart grid communicates directly and via secure connections with electricity-generating equipment such as stand-by generators, combined heat and power (CHP) generators and hydro generators, as well as with electricity-consuming equipment on clients’ sites. This allows Flexitricity to increase generation and reduce consumption during short periods of stress for National Grid, a valuable service that helps stabilise electricity supplies. The company’s patented technology and continuous service monitoring ensure that normal core business operations have priority at all times.

Clients: Flexitricity counts amongst its clients ExCeL London and Kaaij Greenhouses UK.

Market drivers: Include international and national environmental policies and mandates like the Climate Change Act, corporate social responsibility initiatives and carbon reduction, green power and other environmentally conscious energy efforts.

Key definitions:

• Electricity is measured in watts (W). Units of measurement are as follows:

  • 1 terawatt (TW) = 1,000 gigawatts (GW)

  • 1 GW = 1,000 megawatts (MW)

  • 1 MW = 1,000 kilowatts (kW)

  • 1 kW = 1,000 watts

• The rate at which electricity is used is measured in watt hours (Wh). For example, one megawatt-hour (1 MWh) is the amount of energy that would be used if a one-megawatt device was left running for one hour.

Comparisons:

Flexitricity provides short-duration premium energy to National Grid, helping it to secure the electricity system when large power stations fail.

• Most coal-burning power stations generate between 2,000 MW and 2,400 MW, in units of 500MW to 660MW. Drax, Europe’s largest power station, generates just under 4,000 MW in total.  

• Britain’s current largest nuclear power station generates 1,188 MW. New nuclear power stations are expected to be able to generate 3,200 MW.

• There is more than enough flexible reserve electricity available in the UK to easily match the entire output of a major new nuclear station. Only a small fraction of this capability has been developed. It is Flexitricity’s goal to develop this to its full potential.

• Or, put another way, that flexible electricity could provide all of the extra reserve that National Grid needs until 2020 without having to build a single new power station.

• Flexitricity already has sufficient capacity to substitute the output of virtually any of the UK’s on-shore wind farms, should one become disconnected. 

• Early in 2011, Flexitricity expects to achieve sufficient capacity to eliminate usage of a unit at a coal-fired power station.  

• Three years after that milestone, Flexitricity hopes to have capacity comparable with the electricity consumption of Manchester. At that stage, it expects to be reducing the electricity industry’s carbon dioxide emissions by at least 480,000 tonnes annually.

Awards and distinctions:

• 2007 – Shell Springboard – Flexitricity wins the North heat and is named UK runner-up

• 2008 – Flexitricity named one of the Cleantech 100

• Flexitricity short-listed for the John Logie Baird Awards, in its Impact through Innovation category

• Dr. Alastair Martin named as a finalist for the Gannochy Trust Innovation Award of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

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