Respond customer engagement

Respond's fault current limiting (FCL) service is a commercial solution which provides an opportunity for large demand and generation customers to earn rewards by selling a fault current limiting response to their local network operator through a managed service agreement. 

As part of the Respond project we carried out a customer survey with industrial and commercial (I&C) demand and generation customers to determine the willingness and ability of customers across different I&C sectors to provide managed FCL services.

This survey, led by our project partner Impact Research, included distribution network customers from across Great Britain and was supported by our project partners ENER-G, the Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE) and United Utilities. 

Our engagement activities included two customer focus groups with ten I&C customers to help develop our customer communications materials and our survey instrument.

After a robust, targeted campaign, a total of 103 I&C demand and distributed generation customers across Great Britain took part in the customer survey.

Although the Respond trials proved the technical feasibility of the FCL service, our extensive survey of I&C customers showed there is currently no commercial appetite. This may change with the transition to distribution system operator, which is likely to create synergies with other commercial demand side and balancing arrangements in the marketplace.

The method is also suited to a new form of managed connection agreement that could mutually benefit network operators and their customers in the future.

The reports below document our approach to customer engagement and our key findings.