Introduction
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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 grid owners, consumers, producers, and aggregators.
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.
To access the market, a flexibility service provider (FSP) must understand how the traded flexibility products work in order to for approval by the grid owner. Below is an overview of the products supported in SWITCH.
Up to two days before the operating hour (the actual moment when flexibility is needed), the grid owner procures flexibility through the flexibility market.
All participating actors can .
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.
Up to one week before the operating hour (the actual moment when flexibility is needed), the grid owner procures availability through the flexibility market.
The offer with the lowest price wins.
Compensation is provided for allocated availability, known as availability remuneration.
Compensation is provided for activated flexibility, known as activation remuneration.
Activation of flexibility occurs only Day-Ahead.
The grid owner directly procures availability for the entire season, typically weekdays from 7-11 and 16-20 during the months of November to March.
Availability remuneration is fixed for the market.
Activation remuneration is fixed for each procured hour during the season.
Activation can occur both Day-Ahead and Intra-Day.
To enable faster connection to the power grid, even at heavily loaded points, the grid owner can enter into a conditional agreement with a customer. If a problem arises in the power grid, the grid owner, per the agreement, has the right to temporarily limit consumption or production until the overload has decreased again. Although this flexibility product is not market-based, it is coordinated with other flexibility trading in such a way that curtailment only occurs when all other options have been exhausted.
SWITCH can automate the communication exchange between the grid owner and the customer through system integrations, allowing curtailment to be performed without manual steps, based on what is happening in the power grid.
All participating actors can .
Flexibility resources are according to an agreement between the grid owner and the provider prior to the market start.
For more details on how the grid owner can use SWITCH for conditional agreements, see the .
If you want to learn more about the customer’s features and integration possibilities, see the .