Enel X: Leading Demand Response Aggregator in Italy

The Demand Response market is starting to take shape in Italy. When the results of the latest Terna auction were published in September 2018, it emerged that Enel X had been awarded 51 MW, bringing its total to 119 MW and making it Italy’s leading Demand Response aggregator. The dispatching services pilot project promoted by the grid operator Terna had already seen Enel X assigned over 50 MW of industrial and commercial customer-derived flexibility at previous auctions. Enel X thus remains one of the leading players on the energy innovation scene with its own flexibility services.

So how does it work exactly? Through Enel X, and thanks to an expert team that covers the entire value chain, customers receive real-time balancing orders to stabilizse the grid, based on their availability to implement the service. This scenario is driving the energy market towards a whole new era in energy dispatching. A paradigm shift that already seems light years ahead of the scenario of just a few months ago, when only power stations were allowed to participate in the services market. Now, however, there is also a role for distributed generation and demand.

Already an established world leader in Demand Response through its US subsidiary EnerNOC, Enel X is similarly at the forefront of the Italian market. The recently assigned 51 MWs are actually the first to bear the name of the Enel Group’s new energy services and technologically advanced solutions unit. From now on, Italian businesses will also be able to contribute to the energy market, as part of an approach that favors conscious consumption and efficiency, following the guidelines of the core concept of innovability: sustainability and innovation. Another feature worth acknowledging is the process of order management and plant control/monitoring, which uses one of the most evolved smart platforms in the sector. The latter maximizes the value of customer aggregates by leveraging their differing characteristics and availability. The management of such a diversified portfolio of clients, which varies in both size and sector, is one of the key strengths of Enel X’s proposal.

There is growing excitement in Italy about the next phases of the Terna pilot project which, in the future, will also involve Aggregate Virtual Mixed Units (UVAMs). Thesewhich are characterizsed by the presence of non-relevant production units (including storage systems) and consumption units. At this stage, Terna will be required to present the Authority with a trial project relating to the participation of UVAMs in the Dispatching Services Market (DSM), while also evaluating the initial results from the implementation of the pilot projects (onrelating to UVAPs and UVACs, respectively). The ultimate goal is to pursue the technological neutrality encouraged by the Authority to support access to, and participation in, the DSM. Enel X’s range of smart solutions always includes the response best suited to satisfying the needs of the customer.