Energy Flexibility Award
Awarding a company or project driving the development of flexibility markets in the UK, with a clear commitment to customer inclusivity, user experience and enabling energy flexibility. This award highlights forward-thinking approaches to flexibility, storage and balancing markets that support grid decarbonisation, reduce the need for reinforcement and embrace the rollout of digital infrastructure.
Energy Flexibility Award
Awarding a company or project driving the development of flexibility markets in the UK, with a clear commitment to customer inclusivity, user experience and enabling energy flexibility. This award highlights forward-thinking approaches to flexibility, storage and balancing markets that support grid decarbonisation, reduce the need for reinforcement and embrace the rollout of digital infrastructure.
E.ON Next
Flex for All
E.ON Next’s ‘Flex for All’ strategy is a multi-pronged approach, ensuring no one is left behind in this cornerstone of the energy transition. Through experimental innovations, mass-market products, market education campaigns, user-friendly technology, partnerships, and approaches to Ofgem and government, the company is engaging all sectors of society and the marketplace: everyone from the financially-vulnerable in social housing to those in shared accommodation, and from those who can afford connected assets right up to governmental powers-that-be. This strategy is working, with clear evidence of widescale behaviour change: a material energy consumption shift by tens of thousands of customers.
E.ON Next and Kraken Technologies
Kraken Residential Flexibility
NextDriveSmart is an electricity tariff launched by E.ON Next in April 2025 and optimized by Kraken Residential Flexibility. Together, we’re making flexibility simple, scalable and useful for customers, while bringing onboarding, billing and account management into a single joined-up experience. NextDriveSmart customers can smart-charge their EVs via their car or compatible charger according to their preferences and the availability of cheaper, greener energy. 15,000 assets were onboarded in one year and customer satisfaction grew to 80%. This project demonstrated Kraken provides the flexibility infrastructure to operate at scale, support grid decarbonisation and reduce peak pressure on the network.
Eclipse Power
Carpenters Yard: The UK’s largest ‘zero bills’ housing development
Eclipse proudly collaborated with gs8, Octopus Energy and Total Utility Connections to design and deliver Carpenter’s Yard, the UK’s largest ‘zero bills’ housing development. The site boasts a smart microgrid, designed to generate, store and manage electricity using renewable technologies. Supporting low carbon living and reducing household energy costs, this initiative directly benefits end-users with homes having heat pumps, solar PV and no home energy bills for the first five years of ownership. Acting as the Energy Services Company (ESCo), Eclipse was brought in at conception, with a remit to operate and maintain the future operation of the energy system.
National Energy System Operator and Smith Institute
CrowdFlex
CrowdFlex is a NESO-led innovation project showing how domestic flexibility can become a dependable resource for balancing Great Britain’s electricity system. Across three first-of-their-kind large-scale trial phases, 107,000 customers shifted their electricity use and 33,000 EV owners made vehicles available for managed charging. Supported by Smith Institute and a cross-sector consortium, NESO combined this evidence with more than 37,000 survey responses and probabilistic forecasting models. CrowdFlex provides a route towards using household flexibility in grid operations. At national scale, the project’s modelling estimates potential annual system benefits of £472 million after ten years and cumulative emissions savings of 6.3 MtCO2e.
National Grid DSO
More Ways to Flex: Delivering Together
National Grid DSO is giving customers more ways to flex. Increasing, decreasing and shifting electricity use to meet different system needs. Becoming the first DSO to procure Demand Turn Up to help reduce renewable curtailment, while EQUINOX shifted heat-pump demand, Day Ahead brought markets closer to operational need, and Responder is exploring flexibility for severe-weather resilience. Our market has scaled tenfold to 198GWh, registered assets have more than doubled to 365,225 and active providers have grown from 13 to 47. Together, we are creating new earning opportunities for customers and businesses to participate while helping operate the network more efficiently.
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) Distribution
Flexibility Cost-Benefit Analysis tool
SSEN Distribution has developed a new Operational Flexibility (CBA) Cost-Benefit Analysis) Tool, in collaboration with the experts at Baringa. This new tool builds on earlier iterations through its ability to carry out assessments on new use cases for deploying flexibility. This new tool integrates network assessment data across a range of new use cases to evaluate the costs and benefits associated with using flexibility in these hitherto-unfamiliar ways. It provides greater confidence to guide when using flexibility is the most efficient solution, while enabling more robust assessments and generating new insights into various examples where Flexibility could be deployed.
SP Electricity North West
BiTraDER
BiTraDER is the UK's first local peer-to-peer flexibility marketplace enabling customers connected to the distribution network to trade curtailment obligations and network capacity directly with one another. Developed by SP Electricity North West, the platform addresses one of the key barriers to flexibility participation: commercial risk associated with flexible connections and constrained networks. By providing a transparent, neutral trading environment, BiTraDER gives customers greater control over network access, unlocks additional flexibility, and improves utilisation of existing infrastructure. Successfully integrated and tested on the live network, BiTraDER demonstrates a scalable model capable of reducing costs, accelerating low-carbon connections and supporting net-zero.
SP Energy Networks
Growing an Inclusive Flexibility Market for All
SP Energy Networks is transforming flexibility markets through innovative products, inclusive customer engagement and industry-leading market development. Over the last year, SPEN has launched new flexibility services including StormFlex, dynamic LV flexibility and demand turn-up markets, while significantly expanding participation across domestic, commercial and community sectors. Through pioneering initiatives such as CivicFlex and SocialFlex, SPEN is removing barriers that have historically excluded local authorities, social housing residents and fuel-poor customers from flexibility markets. By combining innovation, stakeholder collaboration and measurable delivery, SPEN is accelerating grid decarbonisation, reducing reinforcement requirements and ensuring the benefits of flexibility are accessible to all customers.
UK Power Networks
A Mature Flexibility Market Built on Firsts
UK Power Networks' DSO has taken flexibility from novel idea to everyday infrastructure, and kept pushing forward – with new markets, new use cases, new customer groups. In 2025/26 it proved a GB-first use of consumer-led flexibility, using EVs and batteries to manage voltage, launched the first tender spanning two funding periods, first 100% low-carbon tender, and led industry-first data-sharing initiatives. These advances expand flexibility and increase investment confidence and opportunities for providers and consumers. Dispatched flexibility rose from 1GWh (2022/23) to 15GWh (2025/26), with 43% from homes. Three consecutive Flex Network of the Year titles recognise this sustained leadership.