LEMA Systems Workstream Progress Report

The LEMA Networks and Data & Platform CIGs met on 14th May 2024, both online and at Gemserv’s offices in London. This was the third meeting of the Networks Group it having been initiated last July after the Leeds Castle network meeting last May and prior to the establishment of LEMA in January 2024.

These meetings created a small Integrated Project Team (IPT) to address the core problem statement, i.e. how will DSOs be able to procure and pay for flexibility services they need, but which are yet to be built.

At this first official CIG meeting, chaired by Laurence Carpanini representing The Traxis Group

· the DLA IPT reported back on their progress;

· Petter Allison from The Traxis Group outlined the local system that would provide the DLA service;

· Nigel Bessant from SSEN presented the possible contracting routes.

There followed considerable discussion amongst the CIG participants which lead to broad agreement with what was presented.

It was also agreed that to ‘put some meat on the bones’ of this outline a Modelling Case Study should be initiated, ideally based on a real-life scenario that would demonstrate how the proposed local energy system and the DLA service could work in practice. In turn this will help further refine the overall proposition and the operating criteria needed to manage it.

Several attendees agreed to support the generation of this study with the first step to identify a target development to be modelled.

In the afternoon the first meeting of the Data & Platform CIG was chaired by Laurent Schmitt representing The Traxis Group.

Laurent outlined the proposed approach for a federated system and what this means for supporting platforms, data and security requirements plus related considerations. Dan Hopkinson from Electralink provided a live demonstration of the type of data and service that they can provide.

Building on the earlier action to generate a modelling case study, the group went on to discuss how they could support the data requirements of such a study, again with several members volunteering to assist.

The meetings finished with an ambition of presenting an initial demonstration at the LEMA Summit at Leeds Castle on 2nd and 3rd July.

The next set of CIGs, the Consumer First workstream, will meet on 28th May at Gemserv’s offices and online. It will start with the Benefits, Economics and Finance CIG at 11:00 then the Customer Proposition and Governance CIG in the afternoon.