The aggregator: a key player in flexibility and the grid

Leverage your customers’ flexibilities on the electricity markets

To meet these needs, the aggregator acts as an intermediary between electricity producers, end consumers and energy markets.

With flexibility solutions tailored to their customers’ specific needs, the aggregator helps optimize their energy management and generate new sources of revenue.

Consumption flexibility, otherwise known as “load shedding”, enables energy-intensive consumers (industrial or tertiary) to stop, modulate or substitute their consumption during periods of grid stress. The aggregator is responsible for informing them of periods when they can switch off and promoting their flexibilities on the energy markets and via regulatory mechanisms. In exchange for simply making themselves available to the grid, the aggregator enables each customer to obtain remuneration, as well as an activation bonus for each time load shedding takes place. The aggregator also supports customers with storage assets such as, for example, stationary batteries. These tailored solutions enable them to generate additional income by making the energy stored in these batteries available to the grid. An ideal partnership to help balance the grid, while making storage structures profitable.

The aggregator also influences electricity production, helping producers of renewable or thermal energy modulate their production upwards or downwards to meet the needs of the grid. In exchange for this flexibility, the aggregator enables these producers to diversify their sources of income and make their existing or additional power plants profitable.

Manage risks for customers

As well as enhancing the value of its customers’ flexibilities on the electricity markets, the aggregator constructs solutions and support so that customers don’t have to worry about the complexities of selling electricity on a large scale.

With in-depth knowledge of electricity markets and high-performance technological solutions, the aggregator enables customers to optimize and secure the value of their energy assets while taking into account the various financial, technical and geopolitical constraints. It does this by providing administrative support, intervening throughout the life of the contract to define the modalities of participation in aggregation, remuneration, and the conditions for using resources, and takes on the responsibility of paying out the remuneration associated with the load-shedding that was carried out.

In addition to administrative support, the aggregator provides customers with technical solutions enabling them to control their assets, declare their unavailability and collect and monitor their consumption and production data.

Respond to the needs of the power grid

By promoting the activation of customers’ flexibilities and playing the role of facilitator, the aggregator helps the network cope with periods of grid stress (e.g. consumption peaks or the transition to winter) by responding to signals from RTE and its customers to diversify their sources of income.

In this way, it promotes the integration of renewable energies into the energy mix and limits the use of more carbon-intensive production methods.

At the interface between the customers and energy markets, the aggregator supports the supply-demand balance and guarantees the smooth operation of the power grid.

In response to the electrification of consumption and the massive development of renewable energies governed by precise energy transition objectives, the progressive activation of flexibilities positions the aggregator as an increasingly important player on the grid.