The UK's National Grid said Tuesday it has contracted 319 MW of demand side balancing reserve (DSBR) to 431 businesses, including Tata Steel and Flexitricity, which will result in these large energy users reducing demand or running other sources of generation this winter.
"These contracts will add to the tools that National Grid has to balance supply and demand throughout the winter," National Grid senior manager Peter Bingham said in a statement.
The service will be available during the peak periods and last for short periods between 1600 hours and 2000 hours on weekday evenings between November and February, the UK's transmission system operator said.
If called upon, these companies will reduce their power demand or switch to on-site generation at periods of peak demand and receive payments as compensation from the National Grid for providing this service, it said.
The DSBR along with supplemental electricity balancing reserve tenders for winter 2014/15 are two services designed to provide additional reserves for the winter, following a number of outages since June this year, including fires at the Ironbridge and Ferrybridge power stations and a closure announcement at Barking power station.
In addition, National Grid said it will hold two tenders for next winter of 2015/16 DSBR winter requirements -- the first to be opened this October and the second in spring 2015.
