An electric vehicle charger in Bridgend, South Wales, has become the 200,000th asset registered on National Grid’s flexibility market platform (Market Gateway): a major milestone in the UK’s journey towards a smarter, more flexible energy system.
This marks a significant advance in scaling up local grid flexibility across a region that covers South Wales, the South West and the Midlands, reinforcing the role of National Grid’s Distribution System Operator (DSO) in enabling the UK’s energy transition.
Launched in February 2023, Market Gateway has transformed local energy flexibility by creating a procurement market that helps National Grid actively manage its distribution network to affordably deliver power to over 8m customers.
Flexibility Service Providers throughout the region register assets on Market Gateway, including electric vehicle charging stations, heat pumps and energy storage devices. These assets are then able to provide services to National Grid DSO by changing the way energy is used or produced.
This can reduce strain on the network and may avoid costly network upgrades to handle temporary demand spikes. In simple terms, this could be increasing or decreasing the use of energy, or changing the time at which energy is put into the electricity network.
Close collaboration between National Grid and Flexibility Service Providers has driven this remarkable growth. Asset registrations have more than doubled again year-on-year, with around 10,000 assets signing up to the platform every month.
This surge reflects growing confidence in the platform and its role in enabling a smarter, more responsive energy system.
For more information visit EICDataStream https://eicdatastream.the-eic.com/search/project/699188/National-Grid-Power-Infrastructure-Frameworks