Energy transition explained

The process of reducing the power consumption of a customer to better match the demand for power with the supply.

DSF is the deviation from planned consumption, generation and/or use of storage in response to price signals or instruction, from residential, commercial or industrial sites, individually as well as through aggregation.

Refers to measures taken by a utility to encourage conservation of electric usage or to reschedule electric usage for more uniform usage throughout the day or year i.e. demand response. Such efforts are intended at minimising the size and number of generating facilities or designing strategic load growth.

De-ratings are applied to batteries to better represent the contributions they make to the electricity system. The rating (ranging from 1-100) reflects the reliability of supply that asset can provide. The higher the de-rating the more reliable the asset is, which indicates that higher revenue is available.

Electric charge which flows in one direction. Electricity grids around the world are based on alternating current (AC) rather than DC. 

Smaller generation units that are located on the consumer side of the meter, such as rooftop photovoltaic (PV) units.

Distributed generation is the process of generating electricity from sources near the point of use instead of centralised generation sources from power plants. Examples include rooftop solar PV, wind, small hydro schemes and flexible gas engines.

Means of providing heating to a number of buildings from a centrally located source. The heat is transferred through a network of insulated pipes from the generation unit (often a CHP plant) to the buildings. Each dwelling will have a heat interface unit which extracts some heat from the district heating circuit. The cooler water returns to the generation unit in return pipes. 

Heating technologies using electricity as a fuel to heat a property. The two most popular technologies are direct electric (e.g. panel heaters or bar heaters) and electric storage heaters.

The process of replacing technologies that use fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) with technologies that use electricity as a source of energy.

The principle of using electric propulsion for a range of transportation types such as cars, buses, trucks and ships.

A business model where customers pay for an energy service without having to make any upfront capital investment, such as by subscription.