BESS Market Entry for Octopus Energy

Brief

Octopus Energy is a renewable tech pioneer managing a £5bn portfolio of renewable energy assets. It’s also the UK’s fastest-growing energy provider, serving 4.9m domestic customers with green power. With a rapidly growing portfolio of customer assets, Octopus Energy was ready to offer flexibility to the GB Balancing Mechanism (BM) through a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). Quorum was chosen to provide software and infrastructure to support and streamline critical business processes required to participate in the BM.

Solution

The solution included software modules from our Sentinel NGESO Interface Suite, namely Sentinel EDT, Sentinel EDL and Sentinel Dashboard. Furthermore, we set up an EDT and EDL comms connection through our well-established managed infrastructure service, adhering to NGESO’s communication standards.

KrakenFlex, which is part of the Octopus Energy Group, provides control and dispatch management for the BESS. This posed complex interface challenges. Our experience with the KrakenFlex platform and the relationship we share with the KrakenFlex team greatly contributed to swiftly overcoming these challenges.

In delivering the system, Sentinel EDT was deployed to automate the submission of PN, MEL and BOD data to NGESO, triggered by changes in BMU capacity as notified by the customer’s platform. This ensures the correct structuring and consistent, reliable submission of data to NGESO whilst providing an accurate and transparent customer position. Sentinel EDL was provided to automatically receive, validate and accept BOAs, along with other BM instructions, before forwarding them to KrakenFlex for automated dispatch. Additionally, Sentinel EDL manages the automated dynamic data submissions of BMU capability to NGESO.

To enhance user clarity and understanding, Sentinel Dashboard, fully integrated with Sentinel EDT and EDL, was introduced to offer precise position tracking and facilitate dynamic data submissions. Alerts and alarms were also configured to ensure the customer will never miss an important event.

Results

In the delivery of the solution for Octopus Energy, the following was achieved:

• Rapid deployment of Sentinel EDT and EDL, enabling access to the BM on time and within budget
• Full integration with the KrakenFlex platform
• Automation of critical system functions to provide reliability and risk management by reducing human interaction and subsequent error
• A single vendor supporting the customer’s software and IT infrastructure, streamlining the support process

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