Grid congestion arises because the load on the electricity grid is growing faster than the grid can handle. More and more businesses are electrifying their processes, homes are switching to heat pumps, and many solar and wind installations are being added.
The structural solution to grid congestion is to reinforce and expand the electricity grid. This requires permits, personnel, materials, and coordination with other infrastructure, making it a complex and time-consuming process. In the meantime, using existing capacity smartly is essential.
Even once the grid has been reinforced, there will still be times when supply and demand don’t align well—think of a sunny summer day or a cold evening with high electric consumption. Flexible capacity then helps keep the grid in balance.
That’s why grid operators, market participants, and companies are already investing in flexibility solutions—solutions that not only help in the short term, but also make a lasting contribution to a reliable energy system.
Can your production or consumption sites temporarily adjust? Then GOPACS gives you access to a market where flexibility is rewarded. We help you take the first steps, ensure your site is correctly registered, and point you to a suitable service provider. This way, you get more out of your connection and contribute to the grid.
As a CSP, you play a key role in making flexible capacity available. GOPACS supports you through the onboarding process, helps with asset registration and linking, and provides insight into congestion areas and market data. This enables you to serve your customers better and actively contribute to a future-proof energy system.
If the supply of or demand for electricity is greater than the electricity grid in a given region can handle, the grid operator calls on the market to use or generate more or less electricity. The market includes parties such as energy suppliers and aggregators and wholesale customers.
These companies then indicate the price at which they wish to do so, called flex bid (also called congestion bid). If the flex bid is taken, the market participant receives a fee for it.
Many assets used for GOPACS can also be deployed on other markets, such as FCR, aFRR, or the imbalance market. This requires coordination with your CSP and BRP to avoid double usage or conflicting signals.
Grid operators do as much as possible to avoid transportation restrictions. Unfortunately, due to huge demand, this is not always possible. In some cases, with the help of our customers who have flex available, we can mitigate the congestion situation. This often involves a short period such as a few weeks in winter, for example.
This prevents problems on the power grid. However, this does not mean that this will also make additional capacity available for companies to expand their electricity capacity. This is another step further that in many cases is unfortunately not possible until we have the power grid upgraded or expanded with an additional station.
Unfortunately, that is not possible. The grid operators use the date of entry for all applications to determine the order of priority.
Whether or not to participate in making flex bids is separate from that. However, it is of course true that our goal with the flex bids is to reduce congestion situations c.q. fix it and that all customers benefit from it.
