Flexibility – in all its shapes and sizes – is a many splendoured thing.
Flexibility gives people, households and communities more choices and autonomy to have warmer homes, cleaner transport, better preparation for storms, and lower power bills. Flexible electricity systems promise more sustainable, reliable, resilient and affordable electricity.
Back in October 2022, BCG said a smart system evolution provided the most desirable pathway to a sustainable, reliable, resilient and affordable energy system.
The smart system involved a bunch of investment, including “about 5 GW of additional renewable generation capacity, supplemented with approximately 1 GW of supply-side and 2 GW of demand-side flexibility to be developed each decade.”
Source: BCG, The future is electric, October 2022.
Easy to say. Harder to do. Realising these benefits relies on people going on their flexibility journey and ‘saying yes to flex’. This journey is not easy or routine.
FlexForum published the initial Flexibility Plan in August 2022 to provide a checklist of the tasks and actions required to achieve that target of 2 GW each decade.
Most tasks in the plan involve developing ‘back-office’ capabilities, processes or practices to integrate flexible resources into the market and system.
Each of the 41 steps listed in the plan is important to realising the benefits of flexibility. However, some steps warrant greater priority because the outputs are necessary conditions of progress.
Drawing on the 2024 progress report and views emerging from FlexForum discussions so far in 2025, we see three interdependent sets of tasks with 13 priority actions:
Most tasks in the plan involve developing ‘back-office’ capabilities, processes or practices to integrate flexible resources into the market and system.
Each of the 41 steps listed in the plan is important to realising the benefits of flexibility. However, some steps warrant greater priority because the outputs are necessary conditions of progress.
Drawing on the 2024 progress report and views emerging from FlexForum discussions so far in 2025, we see three interdependent sets of tasks with 13 priority actions:
Because they will own the flexible resources needed to achieve that 2 GW a decade target. There are 3 key steps:
• #2 Determine if people can easily get information about their existing electricity retail rates and charges.
• #9 Introduce rules to require data holders (e.g., retailers) to instantaneously respond to requests by a person or their agent for usage data from the data holder.
• #12 Determine the options to make it easy for people to compare their connection options and costs with and without flexibility.
By providing cash signals to motivate and incentivise dependable flexible responses to network and system conditions. Three key steps here too:
• #7 Develop an initial common description of the use cases for each electricity outcome.
• #10 Develop and deliver a plan to provide cash signals which are accurate (as possible), give easy access to benefits, and motivate efficient responses.
• #24 Identify and develop mechanisms for exchanging flexibility for each use case which are low cost, support liquidity and participation, and make it easy for people to maximise the benefits of their flexibility.
Focusing on removing barriers to data users plugging into the data system to support people choosing and using flexibility options. Lots of steps needed here:
• #9 Introduce rules to require data holders (e.g., retailers) to instantaneously respond to requests by a person or their agent for usage data from the data holder.
• #19 Develop a common minimum functionality for each flexibility use case so the same device can provide the same services across the country.
• #28 Make changes to the registry to make flexible resources visible to the market and system.
• #30 Develop a minimum set of operational visibility requirements and capability to support integration of flexible resources into distribution networks and the system.
• #31 Develop a minimum set of forecasting requirements and capability to support integration of flexible resources into distribution networks and the system.
• #36 Develop a common approach to connectivity which easily integrates and maximises the value of flexible resources.
• #39 Identify the functions, capability and roles required to coordinate a power system with multi-directional power flows and flexibility.
At the time of writing, FlexForum is in the middle of assessing progress with the Flexibility Plan. This annual exercise helps FlexForum define priorities and identify gaps in effort. Keep an eye out for the next progress report in early September. It will be interesting to see how that changes this list!
We reckon the Flexibility Plan 2.0 is a pretty good starting point for a serious effort to effectively leverage the value of flexibility and it would be great to see these tasks picked up in any strategy for the sector and outputs from the Ministerial review.
