That’s right. It turns out your GivEnergy home storage battery is actually an asset. We’ll show you how to make money from battery storage.

As the National Grid morphs into a Smart Grid, with millions of micro-generation systems and tens of thousands of batteries integrated into it, how it operates is changing.

Furthermore, as the generation capacity becomes more heavily skewed to wind power, which is variable in its output, the Electricity Supply Operator (ESO) needs to retain flexibility over where it can draw power from. Sometimes there will be too much power, and we can have the option of turning generators off or giving the electricity away for reduced cost thereby increasing demand temporarily.

But perhaps of greater concern is when there is insufficient power. On 1 December 2023, there was a “live” event where electricity demand was elevated (due to the cold) and supply was constrained (due to the lack of wind).

Whilst the grid always retained sufficient reserve power throughout, and supply was never in question, that supply did involve firing up fossil fuel generators.

In step battery asset owners. As Ben James and Karl Bach from Axle Energy put it “the ESO put out a call for a huge 550 MW of power (equivalent to an average UK gas power plant) between 16:30 to 18:00 on Friday 1 December 2023. At Axle, our systems sprung into action to help stabilise the grid.”

So what did this mean in practice for GivEnergy battery owners?

Axel Energy’s software remotely controlled the battery. They ensured it was sufficiently charged before the event, and then discharged it on full power for 90 minutes. Earning £4.20 per kWh, a GivEnergy All in One owner could have earnt up to £37.80 during this period. And if this electricity had been bought the night before for £0.81, then the total profit was likely to be £36.99.

Best of all, this is completely automatic: “Thanks to GivEnergy’s tech infrastructure and APIs, battery owners who opt in can have their batteries optimally charged and discharged by Axle.”

This is just the start of the story of Demand Flexibility Response

We are really just in the “foothills” of this opportunity. Just over 2000 batteries participated in the scheme on 1 December 2023. The scale of the opportunity is enormous. Just imagine if this extended to millions of batteries up and down the land.

The implementation of Demand Flexibility Response began in winter 22/23, and Axle’s service began operating in November 2023. James and Bach note that there will soon be “a wide range of flexibility markets, earning money throughout the year and balancing the grid at local and national levels.”

One reason for the importance of these novel practices is that there is a physical disconnect between the supply and demand of renewable generation. Supply from Scotland into England is physically constrained by the National Grid which has 2 primary connections running across the border. So it is ideal to be able to spread out that supply and demand over a longer period of time. In effect we can send the power down south during the night into batteries, and then during the peak demand period that renewable electricity is deployed by batteries into local markets, rather than having to travel from the Scottish Highlands.

How to make more money from Battery Storage

At an individual level, a GivEnergy All in One owner can expect to earn at least £150 over the winter 23/24, and probably even more than this.

At the moment our ability to participate in the electricity market is controlled by the ESO Demand Flexibility Scheme. They have set the number of trial events this winter at a minimum of 12 events.

But it seems completely logical that after this trial period is complete, battery owners will be able to sell electricity to the grid on a regular basis. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a logical reason why we couldn’t get to a stage where pretty much every single night during the winter (and perhaps all year round) batteries are deployed to meet the tea-time peak demand.

Once there are sufficient batteries signed up to Axle’s automated service, and they can guarantee a certain amount of power into the grid at a specified time, then we can actually remove some excess power generation from the grid permanently. And so every evening, between 5-6pm your battery might discharge 6kWh into the grid, and you’ll earn about £12.

The Return on Investment for your battery starts to look very exciting.

And finally

The best thing about this scheme is that unlike previous generations of incentives for Solar such as the Feed in Tariff, this scheme is economically beneficial to all concerned. It isn’t a subsidy scheme. It is serving the electricity market, and allowing domestic battery owners the opportunity to participate in that market.