In this report for the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, NERA Director Sean Gammons and Senior Consultant Richard Druce, along with a team from Imperial College London, analyse the system balancing challenge caused by the increasing penetration of renewable power generation, electric heating, and electric vehicles.

The report analyses the role that “alternative balancing technologies” (interconnection, flexible generation, electrical storage, and demand-side response) can play in meeting this system balancing challenge over the period to 2050. The team also examines potential barriers to the efficient deployment of alternative balancing technologies created by market and regulatory arrangements and identifies some possible solutions for overcoming them.