Introduction

SWITCH enables a wide range of flexibility services and solutions in a simple and accessible way. It is a web-based platform that offers extensive communication capabilities with a user interface for performing both manual and automated operations. SWITCH facilitates connections and interfaces between various stakeholders, including network owners, consumers, producers, and aggregators.

Flexibility Markets and Trading

Today’s society is heavily dependent on electricity, and many consumers follow the same consumption patterns. For example, households use a lot of electricity in the morning at the same time as an industry ramps up its production and an electric vehicle stops to charge. Grid owners want to avoid these temporarily high loads on the power grid by allowing flexibility providers to temporarily alter planned behavior (also known as demand response or peak shaving).

This type of flexibility helps reduce bottlenecks and is fundamentally about adjusting the use of electricity and power to ensure the grid is utilized more efficiently, enabling more people to connect faster.

In flexibility markets, different types of actors are paid to contribute to creating flexibility in the power grid. There are several flexibility services that can be sold on a market, both by making resources available for delivery and by activating the actual behavioral change. Delivering flexibility can involve reducing energy consumption or increasing the electricity produced and fed into the grid. Battery storage, heat pumps, and backup generators are examples of flexibility resources. Additionally, smaller resources can participate in the local flexibility market through an aggregator.

Flexibility Products

Below is an overview of the products supported in SWITCH. More details can be found in the sections for Market products and Conditional agreements.

Seasonal Availability

• The network owner procures availability for the entire season, typically weekdays from 7-11 and 16-20 during the months of November to March.

• All participating actors can submit offers.

• The offer with the lowest price wins.

• Compensation is provided for awarded availability, known as availability remuneration.

• Compensation is provided for activated flexibility, known as activation remuneration.

• Activation can occur both Day-Ahead and Intra-Day.

• Flexibility resources are scheduled for activation according to an agreement between the network owner and the provider prior to the market start.

Availability Orders

• Up to one week before the operating hour (the actual moment when flexibility is needed), the network owner procures availability through the flexibility market.

• All participating actors can submit offers.

• The offer with the lowest price wins.

• Compensation is provided for awarded availability, known as availability remuneration.

• Compensation is provided for activated flexibility, known as activation remuneration.

• Activation of flexibility occurs only Day-Ahead.

Direct Orders

• Up to two days before the operating hour (the actual moment when flexibility is needed), the network owner procures flexibility through the flexibility market.

• All participating actors can submit offers.

• The offer with the lowest price wins.

• Compensation is provided for activated flexibility, known as activation remuneration.

• Activation of flexibility can occur both Day-Ahead and Intra-Day.

Conditional Agreements

• The network owner enters into an agreement directly with the customer for a conditional connection.

• In exchange for a faster connection process, the customer agrees that their connection capacity will be automatically limited during urgent needs.

• Control signals are sent instantly if thresholds are exceeded at a monitored point in the power grid.

• The network owner verifies that the control measures have been implemented as per the agreement by measuring the customer’s facility.