Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has announced plans to hold a tender for a new market platform to host its future flexibility auctions.
The company is aiming to procure 5GW of flexibility over the five-year ED2 price controls and is now reviewing the tools and platforms that are available to help achieve this goal.
Speaking to Utility Week, Catherine Winning, flexibility markets manager at SSEN, said the timeline for implementation is too tight for someone to build something “totally from scratch.”
“We’d ideally like something someone has used before and then to build upon that as needed,” she added. “It’s very much a partnership we’re looking for”.
Four of the six distribution network operators (DNOs) in Great Britain are currently using the Piclo Flex platform to host their flexibility tenders. SP Energy Networks and Northern Powergrid both signed new contracts with Piclo earlier this year.
SSEN also used an earlier version of Piclo’s platform as part of a government funded trial, which ended in 2019. Winning said the other potential vendors on their radar include Electron, Electralink and Nodes.
Under its two-year contract with Piclo, SP Energy Networks became the first DNO to sign up to its new expanded end-to-end service, which covers not only advertisement and procurement but also the dispatch and settlement of flexibility services.
When asked what functions SSEN is seeking in its tender, Winning said: “The aim is for us to review out whole end-to-end flexibility lifecycle. We think the first thing to do is get the market platform because the feedback we’ve got from flexibility providers is our market platform is not very user friendly.”
She said the company may then hold further tenders to establish “how we do the rest of that”.
SSEN said potential vendors will be invited to prequalify for the initial tender in mid-November.
In September, SSEN announced it had procured more than 200MW of capacity for its southern licence area in its latest flexibility tender. The company said it had awarded contracts worth £5.15 million to five providers for 2023 to 2028 financial years.