Grid flex rhymes with derivatives trading: an observation

Introduction: To eliminate the ~15% of UK greenhouse gas emissions due to home heating most will move to heat pumps by 2050. But electrifying heating will roughly double peak demand on the grid while green intermittent renewables such as wind and solar make available generation less predictable. Most of us will need to learn to flex our home space heat and hot water and other electricity demand else we will pay a high premium, but we do not all have to flex in the same ways at the same times to support the greening grid. Materials and methods: This study synthesises existing literature and first-hand observations from investment banking derivatives and the energy system, along with primary data from one UK home enumerating a number of viable techniques. Results: Static and dynamic demand-side flexibility responses, automated and manual, have visibly moved the case study home’s load profile away from that of a typical Great Britain (GB) household on winter weekdays when national demand is highest. Conclusions: A portfolio approach with a mixture of different grid flexibility responses across the housing stock, including those driven by Time-of-Use tariffs, can be a first-class contribution to Net Zero.