October 2024 Newsletter

Flex Day 2024

Flex Day was a good day.

We had 55 people from 35 groups and organisations turn up in Christchurch to:

Look forward at what a good, bad and ugly electricity system and market might look like in 2040
Identify the practical priorities for right now
Come up with activities – pilots, trials, research – which will turn the smell of pie into actual pie and give people a real taste of the tangible benefits and value of flexibility…

There was a seriously good vibe and clear intent to do stuff that addresses the priorities of FlexForum and Aotearoa New Zealand.

The vibe was helped by contributions from Vicki Buck (who is not and does not want to be an electricity expert) reminding everyone that it’s not about them, it’s about people, and from Andrew Fraser who joined us from Tasmania bringing shedloads of experience and scars from electricity innovation in Australia.

The 5 ½ things Andrew has learned about successful learning and doing are all worth writing home about, particularly the observation that starting small and failing fast is the way to go.

It’s a job to collate and synthesise everything said at Flex Day.

We have started with the 6 ideas to accelerate progress delivering the Flexibility Plan, and particularly which make electricity easier and provide tangible benefits to people and the wider electricity system.

FlexForum Members have been asked to say whether to Do it, Adapt it or Pass on…
1.   Bringing existing flexibility out of the shadows just using pricing signals
2.   Looking for low-cost options to quickly unlock latent flexible EV charging
3.   Multi-flex sandpit
4.   Humanising flex
5.   Flex-change
6.   Incremental preparatory use of flexibility in the USI.

Tune back in next month to find out what happens next…

And get in touch at info@flexforum.nz if you want to know more about each activity.

Advice about a small change to make a real difference to people’s electricity experience

We recently advised the Electricity Authority on how it could make a small change to the Code and make a real difference by making it easy and routine for people to get prompt and personalised advice about their electrification and decarbonisation decisions.

These things can get a bit technical, but the guts of our advice is for the Authority to nominate a specific date for retailers to implement secure machine-to-machine communication and instantaneous exchange of peoples’ electricity information.

The date must be set considering implementation timeframes and that people and the economy are incurring material costs because prompt and personalised advice is not available.

Prompt and personalised advice relies on instantaneous exchange of electricity information.

The benefits are significant. We know people who can easily and routinely get prompt and personalised advice will be more able and more likely to make informed and confident choices which accelerate electrification and decarbonisation and save time and money for themselves, the power system and the wider economy.

Following this advice and making this small change will deliver step #2 in the Flexibility Plan. FlexForum is keen to see it happen as fast as possible.

Check out the advice here.

Take a minute to check out the FlexForum community

FlexForum can deliver excellent events like Flex Day and provide robust, practical advice due to the commitment and expertise of its Members.

Right now FlexForum has 39 Members with a bunch of new Members joining in the past few months. Since August we have welcomed: Blackyard Consulting, ChargeNet, Evisi, Gridshare, Ivory Egg, Kwetta, Solar Zero and Whiteboard Energy.

Welcome to the FlexForum community of experts committed to making electricity flexibility easy and routine for households, businesses and communities and at the same time achieve a more affordable, reliable and resilient and sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand.

Get in touch if you want to be part of it…..

Things FlexForum are working on

October 2024 Newsletter

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Things FlexForum is working on

FlexForum has a fair bit going on across each of the things we do.

Updating to Flexibility Plan 2.0. The plan provides a ruler to run over activity to check effort is allocated efficiently and hold everyone accountable for progress. A Member workshop should happen in early December to revisit and revise the steps based on progress and what we know.
Using the insights of our deep dives to give advice about policy and regulatory settings. As well as the advice to make instantaneous exchange of electricity information happen asap, we have been workshopping the flexibility-related solutions being considered by the Energy Competition Taskforce. A further workshop is scheduled for 19 November to identify options to ‘encourage more and faster investment in new electricity generation, boost competition, enable homes, businesses and industrials to better manage their electricity use and costs, and put downward pressure on prices.’
Flex Day was the start of a process to do things which accelerate delivering the Flexibility Plan. We will be working with Members and partners in the coming weeks to get stuff done.

Want to get involved?

FlexForum Members want to make it easier for households, businesses and communities to maximise the value of their energy resources and their flexibility. This flexibility will help deliver an affordable and reliable operation of the electricity system and enable accelerated electrification as part of Aotearoa New Zealand’s transition to a zero emissions economy.

If this sounds like you, check out our Intro to FlexForum for more on our what, why, how and who.

Or check out www.flexforum.nz to find out more or get in touch at info@flexforum.nz if you want to become a Member.