Power networks and electricity markets globally are evolving at a significant rate, shifting towards renewable energy generation, adapting to distributed generation, whilst striving to meet growing and unpredictable demand.
This constant flux makes maintaining supply more challenging and complex, necessitating the adoption of a range of technologies and solutions to manage these variables in real time; in broad terms these can be defined as flexibility services.
Regions where the availability of 24/7 electrification are longstanding face the challenge of modifying the system to incorporate flexibility services, whilst maintaining security of supply. In such scenarios, the value of flexibility services are high due to the negative impact and cost of outages, alongside the potential for flexibility to be a more cost effective and commercially attractive solution when compared to upgrading and reinforcing the network at typically vast capital expenditure.
The growth in energy demand in regions such as Asia Pacific continues to accelerate, where challenges related to insufficient infrastructure, islanded and off-grid demand growth, alongside a heavy reliance on diesel generation, gives rise to significant opportunity to utilise renewable generation and flexibility services to facilitate this demand.
Whilst the underlying drivers differ by country and region, the nature of the available technology is inherently adaptable to offer considerable benefit in the majority of scenarios. Through detailed analysis and understanding of local conditions, it is possible to select and deploy the appropriate technologies under the optimal commercial arrangement to maximise the benefit flexibility can deliver. ion Ventures possesses the capabilities, track record and collaborative approach to realise this potential.

As the European electricity markets are developing to support the wider up take of low carbon technology and faced with an ever-increasing demand, the physical assets of the network also need to keep pace. The energy industry is facing huge challenges and major investment is necessary in order to allow for growth. Utilising the historic approach, it is estimated that replacing and upgrading our electricity generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure will require significant capital investment; adopting flexibility services has the potential to considerably reduce the overall cost.
Batteries of varying scale are an ideal technology to support the increasing dependency on low carbon technology in the UK’s energy generation mix and facilitate the stability of the network as balancing supply and demand becomes more challenging.

The growth in deployed energy storage is demonstrably growing year on year, integrating to the network at all levels: grid connected, behind the meter (BtM), co-located with generation and residential.
Having successfully developed, constructed and operated battery energy storage projects in the UK, covering the full lifecycle from sourcing and inception through to financing and operating, we see considerable opportunity in Europe to focus on. Harnessing our expertise in alignment with potential partners and opportunities enables us to maximise the deployment of flexibility services and solutions, deriving the best available benefit for all involved.

The electrification of Asia and movement towards an energised economy have left many of the markets in various states of flux, with some areas experiencing exponential growth in power demand, set alongside increasingly challenging economic conditions that can constrain the investment to meet this demand. Others are still trying to electrify parts of their countries in the best manner they can. This has resulted in governments resorting to supporting the growth of coal and other dirtier fuels to enable energy being available.
The continuing growth of energy demand in the region offers huge scope to deploy distributed energy solutions that meet this demand. The shift to utilising solar PV and wind is well underway; however there remains a considerable dependency on fossil fuel power generation, meaning the need for hybrid solutions alongside standalone renewable energy projects is clear.

With many remote and off-grid regions, alongside thousands of islands , hybrid solutions represent a logical and commercially viable approach to meet demand.
With a wide knowledge of one of the most developed markets in the world, the UK and Europe, ion Ventures is ideally placed to leverage this expertise to accelerate the successful adoption of renewable energy and flexibility services to meet the region’s growth in demand. We envisage successfully developing many MWs of projects by deploying our considerable knowhow in renewable energy, energy storage and hybrid generation and network optimisation.