FAQs

We appreciate that sometimes circumstances change so there will be no penalty for doing this. The exception might be for a company that signs up to a Market Stimulation Package (MSP) and then, even though given the opportunity by SSEN does not provide the agreed services as set out in the contract. Please contact us if you are concerned this may be the case.

If SSEN does not call on you to with enough frequency to meet your contractual obligations, you will still get paid the agreed amount as if you had supplied the service.

No. This is the price ceiling for our Dynamic Constraint Management Service only. Due to the nature of the service it has the highest price ceiling of all the services and unlike the other services payment will be only for the utilisation and not for availability.

As we are running trials, it is very important that we attract enough participation to make the most of the potential to learn from them. The higher payments are designed to incentivise this participation.

As this is an innovation project where we are testing new systems, platforms and processes we cannot guarantee they will all work ‘right first time’ and we will be wanting to engage more significantly with participants to gain feedback and learning from them along the way. We appreciate this may put additional demands on participants.

The services we are testing in these trials also extend beyond those being provided through SSEN’s ‘business as usual (BAU)’ flexibility contracts, with some having shorter duration and notice so we believe that these shorter periods should demand a higher rate of payment.

We also appreciate that some participants may need to invest in their asset to make them fully flexible. Particularly with regards to our Upgrade MSP package, the payments should support businesses in doing this.

The findings from the trials will of course influence the development of SSEN’s BAU approach to procuring flexibility but it should not be assumed that you will see rates increasing in our BAU activities.

SSEN’s BAU Flexibility Team do have calls out for flexibility services for the next 8 years in and around Oxfordshire. You can find out more about these here: https://www.ssen.co.uk/ConnectionsInformation/GenerationAndStorage/FlexibleConnections/CurrentCallsForFlexibility/

Although originally, we did have a 50kW lower limit we removed this in response to customer feedback and to promote competition and market liquidity. However, we are still unable to contract directly with domestic customers, who must go through a third party aggregator.

We are finalising the exact number of markets and utilisations that will be run in our trial areas. We do however expect that in each of the 9 network areas we are running trial period one in (6 BSPs & 3 primary substations) we plan for a maximum of 2 utilisations per week from DSO services in TP1 (P2P services will be at user discretion). Each of the three trial phases will run for between 17-20 weeks (so a total of 50-60 weeks of trials altogether).

Yes.
You will only ever need to complete the ‘Tender for Company Qualification’ and sign up to the ‘Flexibility Services Agreement’ once (assuming none of your company details change) to take part in all the trial periods. You could send us a new ‘Asset Qualification Form’ in any month, adding on new assets within a Trial Period (TP). It will take us up to 30days to confirm your new assets have qualified and once this has been confirmed you can start trading their flexibility straight away.