Flexitricity derives its name from ‘flexible’ and ‘electricity’ and, in its simplest terms, that also explains the company’s technology. Its patented technology provides the company with an offering that’s unique in the world – unlocking the hidden, flexible capabilities of commercial energy users and small generators, creating a revenue stream for clients, improving asset reliability, and stabilising and eliminating risk for the national electricity supply. Flexitricity makes it possible for energy users to carry on with core business while helping make the electricity industry greener and more secure.

The company’s smart-grid technology uses Internet-based communications to either turn down electricity consumption or turn on electricity generation for short periods when the UK’s national electricity system is under stress, such as during demand peaks or when large power stations fail. This approach to load management and flexible electricity generation meets the needs of National Grid, which must keep electricity networks secure at low cost, and provides a more environmentally conscious and sustainable emergency energy resource than traditional alternatives.

Flexitricity’s smart grid is faster, cleaner and cheaper than reserve provided by large coal- and oil-fired power stations on hot standby or running inefficiently at part load. Its live aggregation approach allows it to work with generators and loads that otherwise could not earn revenue from reserve services because they are too small to be accessed individually by National Grid during live system operations. Aggregating small standby diesel generators, opportunities for short-duration load reduction, combined heat and power (CHP) generators and hydro generators creates large-capacity reserve services from many small elements. National Grid can call upon that aggregated reserve for short periods, normally under two hours, when the national electricity system is under stress.

This novel approach to meeting reserve energy requirements is significantly less polluting than other commonly used options for balancing the national electricity system. The resource currently being developed by Flexitricity has more than enough capacity to provide all of National Grid’s reserve power requirements until 2020, eliminating any requirement to build even a single additional reserve power station.

Flexitricity makes it tractable for the UK to absorb large quantities of variable renewable energy generation technologies such as wind, wave and solar. It also helps mitigate the problem of large single points of failure that the construction of new nuclear power stations could create. The goal outlined in the Climate Change Act of a reduction in carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, with an interim target of a 34 percent reduction by 2020, can be achieved using Flexitricity’s smart grid to provide efficient backup to new, low-carbon sources of energy.

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