Electricity Generation
Energy and Climate Change

Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

(1) if he will urge the National Grid to introduce a full metering system to measure accurately the capacity supplied by short term operating reserve aggregators;

(2) what his policy is on establishing an independent auditor of the performance of short term operating reserve aggregators.

Gregory Barker (Minister of State (Climate Change), Energy and Climate Change; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

National Grid has a metering system to accurately measure the capacity supplied by short term operating reserve aggregators in place.

To monitor and despatch services from demand side response providers such as aggregators, National Grid installs a standing reserve despatch (SRD) system. This is connected to the reserve provider's metering equipment to allow the amount of reserve from each contracted provider to be read each minute and communicated back to National Grid. Following installation, National Grid then has the discretion to ascertain the accuracy and adequacy of the metering equipment providing the metering signals and of the resultant data sent to the SRD system.

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change does not plan to establish an independent auditor of the performance of short term operating reserve aggregators.