Swiss company acquires Flexitricity

Swiss energy services company Alpiq has acquired the British company Flexitricity, a leader in the management of networked services, for an undisclosed sum.

Alpiq says the acquisition will allow to gain specialised know-how and new markets in the area of decentralised energy management. .

Since commercialisation in 2008, Flexitricity has been aggregating the electricity production and consumption of energy-intensive industrial, commercial, and public sector companies. Flexitricity offers these electricity volumes to the transmission and distribution system operators as positive or negative reserves for ancillary services. In Europe, Great Britain is the most developed market for demand response services. Flexitricity was a pioneer in this market sector and continues to be a leader in terms of volume and technical capability.

Up to now, network stability was mainly ensured through standard supply control in that conventional power plants offered their services in the ancillary market. Now, demand management is gaining in importance due to higher, fluctuating electricity production from wind farms and photovoltaic systems. In essence, the idea is to make electricity demand more flexible and adaptable to fluctuating electricity supply. If power has to be taken from the grid or electricity has to be fed to stabilise the grid, Flexitricity controls the connected power plants and machines directly via a secure Internet line that connects to a virtual power plant. In doing so, the company stabilises the electricity grid, increases supply security, and reduces CO2 emissions. In addition, Flexitricity optimises the consumption and production volumes of its clients in order to reduce their grid costs.

With the acquisition of Flexitricity, Alpiq has secured specialised know-how in the growing decentralised energy management market as well as a broad portfolio of long-term energy clients in Great Britain. Alpiq plans to continue developing Flexitricity’s innovative solutions and transfer these to other countries.

Flexitricity, based in Edinburgh, was established to develop new ways of maintaining the critical real-time balance between electricity supply and demand, thereby reducing energy costs and improving the environmental performance of the electricity industry. Today, the company runs the largest live, open-market smart-grid operation in the UK, supplying reserve services to National Grid, which has the overall responsibility for the security of the national electricity supply. National Grid uses these reserve services from time to time to keep the electricity system balanced.