It was clear from the latest FlexForum members meeting that there’s a lot going on to enable flex across the electricity ecosystem. There is an increasing focus on flexibility across organisations and an urgent need for action.
With updates from Ara Ake, Commerce Commission, EECA, Electricity Authority and the ENA Future Networks Forum members got a broad overview of the latest on flex-y initiatives, pilots, research papers and programmes. There was a common goal across them all — make the benefits of flexibility easy and routine for households, businesses and communities, and hasten progress towards a smart, flexible power system. You can view the slides from the presentations here.
Fair to say Members are keen to keep the momentum going and use FlexForum to share knowledge and work “smarter and faster”.
Members are super keen for more whole-of-system updates and value FlexForum in helping to join the dots. We will be looking at ways to show the bigger picture and track progress, and possibly use the Flexibility Plan progress report as a mechanism to do this.
Here are a few more takeaways from the meeting…
A recent joint letter between the Commerce Commission, EECA, and the Electricity Authority shows a united front prioritising efficient, non-network solutions. As EECA pointed out “the overall message really is simple - the system needs to start shifting now so that non-network solutions become a core part of how networks are planned and operated”. It’s great to see the agencies working together and having an aligned vision. This was echoed by the responses from distributors, who also largely agreed that pricing was the number one factor for unlocking scaled flexibility.
Across the sector, a number of real-world pilots are taking shape: the Queenstown electrification accelerator in partnership with EECA, V2G trial in Queenstown, six demand flexibility scaled pilots with distributors, Ara Ake’s grant‑funded flexibility pilots, the innovation applications approved by the Commerce Commission and more. We hope to highlight a lot of this work (no matter the stage) through the ‘knowledge hub’ section of the FlexForum website. We’re encouraging members to get in touch so we can share great ideas and avoid repeating mistakes.
Networks and innovators are busy building the tools and frameworks required to make flexibility happen at scale. The Future Network Forum presented their six "marquee projects” including developing capacity maps to share network headroom information and standardising how we value non-traditional solutions to defer network investment. Meanwhile, Ara Ake has successfully distributed $600,000 in grants to flexibility platform applicants, and a second round of funding was made available which supports software development in the flexibility space. They also recently wrote a research paper on the state-of-play in Aotearoa New Zealand’s flexibility market.
Members heard (and wholeheartedly agree) that regulators are seeing the critical role for pricing in enabling flexibility. The Commerce Commission is starting to look at its price path of delivering for consumers (DPP5) with a key focus on “promoting the efficient use of EDB's existing capacity including greater use of non-traditional solutions and managing or incentivising load shifting”.
The Electricity Authority (EA) identified future work focusing on pricing, specifically understanding how time-varying pricing needs to be designed and implemented to allow consumers to get value from flexible assets.
The EA is keen to proceed with its flexibility programme in a collaborative way and will host four workshops to engage those closest to the development of flexible products and services.
Meanwhile, FlexForum is working on a deep dive into pricing and orchestration mechanisms which will kick off soon.
We did a quick stocktake of what members are working on and how FlexForum and its members can help these projects. This is only a small snapshot of what’s going on. We agree that a whole-of-system view of current flexibility work would benefit everyone.
Members are undertaking learning-by-doing in these areas:
A summary of how FlexForum and its members could help:
For FlexForum, the work continues with deep dives into digitalisation and pricing mechanisms, and collating project updates. We encourage you to attend workshops, share flexibility project activities and share perspectives on key questions so we can keep the momentum going.
