Engaging domestic consumers in energy flexibility
Call for input
- Open
- Closed
- Publication date
- Closed date
- Industry sector
- Supply and Retail Market
- Distribution Network
Flexibility is expected to play a key role in the energy sector’s transition to net zero, by helping to balance the challenges of increasingly intermittent supply and increasing electricity demand. Domestic Demand Side Response (DSR) is an emerging form of flexibility which will be key in enabling demand to better correspond with supply. This will require many consumers to change the way they have historically consumed energy, adjusting their energy consumption in response to the needs and requirements of the energy system and being rewarded in return, in effect transitioning from passive billpayers to flexible energy consumers.
We need a large proportion of consumers to engage in DSR in order to seize the opportunity for consumers to benefit from DSR, save consumers billions of pounds in system costs and effectively set up the energy system for the future. We anticipate that flexible energy consumers will engage in DSR in many different ways. Given this, there is a risk that the domestic DSR market will become overly complex for consumers to engage in.
As such, we are calling for input on what is needed to enable a large proportion of consumers to transition to flexible energy consumption. In this call for input, we put forward a view that key to unlocking large-scale engagement is an attractive, simple, and seamless customer journey. Through this call for input, we aim to convene a conversation with all interested stakeholders on this topic to inform policymakers of whether facilitation or policy intervention is required to help make this vision a reality.
We request that stakeholders send us their responses by 17:00 on 29 September 2023 to consumerflexibility@ofgem.gov.uk. We plan to hold workshops in the autumn with stakeholders on the findings of the Call for Input.