Flexitricity reports its VPP can deliver power capacity fast and at scale from a diverse portfolio of flexible assets across the UK, allowing the UK’s national electricity grid to take on more renewables and make best use of existing renewable resources.  

The VPP is monitored and managed from a 24/7 control room in Edinburgh, which deploys advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that the company says ‘is increasingly critical to the optimal management of a net zero power system’.

Commenting on the news, Andy Lowe, CEO, Flexitricity, says: ‘One gigawatt is the equivalent of avoiding the need to build a utility scale fossil-fuelled power station as the UK progresses its energy transition. So, whilst a huge milestone for us, it is also an important bellwether for the UK’s energy industry. Flexible energy asset portfolios and managed services must scale materially larger if the UK is to achieve a net zero energy system.’

Noting that this is ‘a clear signal that the market now places real value on having flexibility within the UK’s energy system’, Lowe adds that he expects the company’s VPP portfolio, which doubled in the past three years, to double once again in the coming few years.  

Keith Gains, Managing Director at parent company Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners continues: ‘Increasing flexibility within the energy system must remain central to all decarbonisation efforts. For our energy systems to deliver the maximum amount of renewables to homes and businesses in an optimal way, we need the ability to rapidly adjust consumer demand in real time. This requires advanced digital tools and capability. We also need to store renewable energy when it’s surplus to needs and then quickly provide reserve power to the system when supply or demand varies at short notice and deliver millisecond responsiveness in order to replace the stability credentials which large thermal power stations have provided historically. The Flexitricity VPP does all of this.’