Historically, Britain’s electricity system was built around large power stations that increased output whenever demand rose. Now that wind and solar supply a growing share of our power, demand increasingly has to adjust to supply. 

That’s where flexibility comes in. The UK now has an estimated 4 to 5GW of flexibility from households, most of it from electric vehicles that charge when power is cheapest, and it’s growing faster than battery storage did a decade ago. 

But can millions of household devices be as dependable as a gas plant when the grid is under pressure? 
Will people let their energy supplier decide when their car charges or their heat pump runs to get the benefits of flex, and what would it take to earn that trust? 

And as more homes go electric, how do we avoid simply moving the evening peak to later in the night? 

This week, Charlotte Johnson, VP and General Manager for Flexibility at Kraken, joins host Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett to explore how flexibility is changing the way the grid is run and paid for. 

They discuss where the savings for bill payers come from, why basic peak and off-peak tariffs only go so far, what the Demand Flexibility Service has shown about how households respond, and how Kraken manages almost 9GW of assets, from home EV chargers to grid-scale batteries. 

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Keywords: 

Flexibility | Demand-Side Response | Kraken | Smart Charging | Electric Vehicles | Home Batteries | Heat Pumps | Demand Flexibility Service | Grid Balancing | Energy Bills | UK Energy