The Substation Podcast The Substation Podcast

Tom and Emma talk about skip rates - the term used to describe assets not being dispatched in the electricity market, although they're in merit. They discuss how definitions for skip rates differ across stakeholders, and talk about work underway to improve skip rates. Are they a natural part of balancing a complex system or are they avoidable quirk of old systems?

Tom and Emma discuss options for improving locational signals on the electricity system that aren't Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP). Could reforms to network access, network charging, new markets and services send better signals to the market and reduce constraint costs? Could these options be easier to implement than LMP, and reduce potential investor uncertainty? And why can't we just build more wires?

In the third episode in the series about the role of demand in energy markets, Emma and Tom speak to Alex Schoch, global head of flexibility at Octopus Energy. They discuss how Demand Side Response will evolve to become intelligent demand. Read the Octopus blog about this at: https://octopus.energy/blog/intelligent-demand/ 

In the second in a series on the role of demand in energy, Tom and Emma talk about the arrangements in GB gas and electricity systems that are used when the market fails to balance supply and demand. What are the steps taken to avoid disconnecting demand? How is energy rationed when there isn't enough, and how do we return back to normal market operations afterwards?

In the first in a series about energy demand, Emma and Tom discuss how demand interacts with energy, covering energy efficiency, demand side response, demand destruction and rota disconnections. How should different kinds of demand be incentivised, now and in the future?

In the third episode on electricity market design, Tom and Emma ask "What is Time?". But they're not physicists, so they can't answer this question. But they can answer: What's a Settlement Period? What's an EFA Block? What do futures contracts represent? All this - and more - in the latest episode of the Substation Podcast.