FlexForum had its first Annual General Meeting on 22 August 2024. Members considered the year that was, the year ahead, and selected a new independent chair and steering group members. 
 

The year that was built the base have a real impact in 2025 and included: 

• Built the connections needed for effective coordination and collaboration through regular conversations and exchanges between Members and with partners like MBIE, regulators and ENA 

• Delivered 2 deep dives using the expertise of our diverse membership to identify Actions to make flexible EV charging an easy and obvious choice and to describe the Holes in the value stack 

• Assessed progress with delivering the Flexibility Plan, the first rigorous assessment of the sector’s pace and direction. The exercise has highlighted several things which need to be prioritised 

• Commissioned a Knowledge Hub to collate the collective experience with flexibility and share what is being done. The Knowledge Hub should be live September 2024  

• Heaps more Members with an increase in membership of more than 50% from 23 in July 2023 to 35 today! 

For more, check out the report on FlexForum affairs for 2023-24 - here. 
 

Members agreed that the year ahead will focus on doing the things where FlexForum has and can have the biggest impact:  

• More deep dives harnessing the expertise of our diverse membership and fast pace to establish common facts and work out where differences lie over a 3-4 period  

• Update the Flexibility Plan and continue to measure progress. The Flexibility Plan is a powerful ruler to run over learning-by-doing (eg, pilots, trials) and regulatory proposals to make sure they are heading in the right direction and involve the people who should be involved  

• More learning-by-doing is needed (on the right things and with the right people). The inaugural FlexForum Day is being organised to scope the practical actions and activities that are most needed to maintain pace and direction and involve the people who should be involved. 

Members selected a new independent chair and two new steering group members. 

Toby Stevenson (independent chair), Ryan Kuggeleijn (Meridian Energy) and Rebecca Osborne (Transpower) join the continuing Steering Group members Shay Brazier (Revolve Energy), John Campbell (Our Energy), Matt Smith (Vector), Terry Paddy (Cortexo) and Fiona Wiseman (Mercury Energy).  

The Steering Group is responsible for the day-to-day operation of FlexForum. Each member is there in their personal capacity, not as representatives of their organisation or employer, but the make-up of the group is required to reflect the diverse and whole of supply chain interests of the wider FlexForum membership – we think this group does that pretty well.  

Members also thanked with great thanks: Steve Batstone, the inaugural independent chair, and Evie Trolove (Orion) who both stepped down from the Steering Group after a year of very hard graft. Both Steve and Evie will remain involved in the FlexForum’s mahi. 
 

The year ahead will build on what we have done and achieved to make an even bigger impact to make it easy for people, and the wider economy, to get value from their flexibility. 

We will be doing 4 things. 

1. Updating the Flexibility Plan and again checking progress next year. Monitoring progress with the Flexibility Plan (or indeed any plan) is a necessary condition for effective coordination and collaboration. The update of the Flexibility Plan (later this year) and completing the ‘future blueprint’ of the flexibility system will move us even closer towards having a sequenced roadmap for flexibility development with 3, 5 and 10 year milestones. 

2. Deep dives on gnarly topics: We will continue to undertake ‘deep dives’. They give FlexForum a coherent and expert voice on the hard stuff and are highly valuable where the facts are not known or agreed, where trade-offs are required, and to identify a good direction and keep moving.  
   We are getting practised at doing them – we can be confident that even complex issues can be worked through in a focused 3-4 month member-driven process and we will encourage regulatory and policy bodies to use the approach routinely. 

3. More learning-by-doing is needed, but it needs to be on the right things and inclusive. We will use the inaugural FlexForum Day to scope the practical actions and activities that are most needed to maintain pace and direction and involve the people who should be involved. The plan is to develop and then deliver about 4 solid projects which will test minimum viable products needed to move towards what good looks like. 

4. More openness on learning-by-doing. We will populate the Knowledge Hub with information about what is planned, is happening and done. There is some learning-by-doing happening, it is difficult and time-consuming to discover who’s trialling what, and what has been learned. Thanks to the EEA for assisting stand up the Knowledge Hub. We expect it to be available in September.

Goes without saying that we are nearly as excited as Big Kev to get on with this doing. 

We also will do more to tell our story. A big part of this will be showing how flexibility – and FlexForum efforts to make it an easy and obvious choice – is relevant to ‘real’ households and businesses. This will help ground our more complex and technical discussions in the reality of humans who might consider making their flexible available to the system. 

These focus areas all tie together. The more everyone contributes to the deep dives, shares their learning-by-doing, and identifies specific learning opportunities, the more equipped FlexForum is to engage with industry, officials, and regulators with focused insights and evidence that reflect the diversity and collective ‘smarts’ of the membership.  

This will accelerate the pace at which steps in the Flexibility Plan are delivered and achieve our mission: to make it easier for households and businesses to get value from their flexibility.