Significant electrification of heating is a fundamental requirement for decarbonisation. Electrification of home heating is expected to increase residential electricity demand by 50% in 2035, and to double peak demand by 2050, creating a significant additional cost for the GB electricity system.  This project will look to understand how flexibility market signals can encourage electrification of heating, and the adoption of flexible heating practices from domestic consumers and their homes. This project aims to understand what market signals the ESO should develop to encourage electrified heating, flexibility practices and understand where these sit in the wider context of market signals for domestic consumers.

Benefits

This project brings significant benefits to the ESO and potentially to DNOs. These benefits include improved visibility and understanding of market signals for consumers. It will help in the identification of appropriate market signals, enablement of flexibility markets and in the overall conception of a stronger business case for electrification of heat, with significant impact on emissions reductions. The project also enables a reduction of network reinforcement requirements, the optimisation of generation capacity and costs as well as contributing to an improvement in network resilience. Due to the positive impact of all those benefits, this project ultimately enables the reduction of consumer bills.