The priority for the coming year should be to focus on developing and delivering scalable flexibility propositions that customers can see, understand, and experience flexibility benefits. Put another way, a coordinated, strategic approach with parties across the supply chain working collaboratively is a necessary condition for maximising the expected flexibility benefits. We think this means concentrating efforts on the enabling conditions that turn pilots and back-office progress into routinely available customer offers: dynamic signals of market and system conditions, connected devices, usable data, shared standards, transparent learning and sustained support for the people driving change. Members agreed that we need to move fast, because failing to do so risks locking in an inflexible, high-cost power system that will drive up bills for decades.
FlexForum and the wider flex community are well-positioned to move ahead in ensuring the benefits of flex are easily and routinely available to households, businesses and communities. Current and future learning-by-doing provides the conditions to explore options and solutions which are needed to deliver flexibility benefits.
FlexForum will be doing its part over the coming year by focusing its efforts in four areas Maintaining and reporting progress with the Flexibility Plan. As well as the annual progress report, we will look at upgrading to v3.0 in 2027 to reflect the passage of time and progress. Flexibility leadership through deep dives on gnarly topics to develop expert advice for decision-makers. We will keep working to deliver the deep dive on pricing and physical orchestration mechanisms needed for a smart, flexible system. It's increasing evident a whole-of-system view of the signals firing the flexibility nervous system is needed. Knowledge sharing. The knowledge sharing activities started in 2026 will be continued and expanded where possible, with a particular focus on practical updates for practitioners that collate and synthesise insights of learning-by-doing. Support for learning-by-doing by assisting EECA and Members with expertise and a space to test ideas/ask questions/get advice about learning activities. Specific support, eg, scaled DF project and general support, eg, collating/sharing so what project information. The 2026 progress report highlights the importance and difficulty of practical collaboration. We will explore how to make more collaboration easier and routine. We are looking forward to Flex Day 2026 (probably October) which will focus on sharing and discussing experience gained over the past year. Our efforts will particularly focus on removing two major progress roadblocks: - A prioritisation problem. Effort is currently siloed and skewed toward technical and network-related flex learning rather than critical customer-focused learning (which is crucial for proving that flex lowers bills and costs without disrupting day-to-day activities).
- A transition problem. A poorly coordinated pipeline for shepherding activity from understanding through to implementation, leaving gaps where there is lack of clear responsibility or timing for delivery.
Over the coming year, with the support and contributions of its Members, FlexForum can help move these roadblocks by: - capturing, testing and sharing the insights from the learning-by-doing
- using these insights to build consensus on the practical changes required to develop a smart, flexible power system.
Click on the image below to see a snapshot of flex progress and priorities for 2027 | 
