Early insights into the scale-up of smart local energy systems.
The scale-up of smart local energy systems (SLES) that combine renewable energy (RE) and smart technologies for system flexibility has been seen as a potential way to accelerate the energy transition to deep decarbonisation (Ford et al, 2019).
This Briefing Note from EnergyREV aims to assess the role of SLES in the energy system transition. It focuses on how non-optimal decision making by both investors and policy agents can influence the uptake of SLES and the UK electricity sector’s long-term decarbonisation. Different types of national and local investors with different characteristics and investment strategies (e.g. myopic decision-making) are explicitly represented in the modelling framework. The interaction between the major market schemes – such as capacity market and Contracts-for-Difference (CfD) – and market players is investigated in order to explore both how SLES can be scaled-up and the potential impacts of SLES on the whole power system.