Generate additional revenue from your existing heat pumps, electric boilers, and thermal storage while continuing to deliver reliable heat to customers.
The Enel X Virtual Power Plant makes that practical: one platform that connects, optimises and monetises the assets you already run.
Flexibility means controlling when your assets draw or generate electricity.
Heat pumps, electric boilers and thermal storage can run when power is cheap, clean or abundant, and pull back when the grid is tight. Done well, the heat network becomes a shock absorber between the electricity system and heat demand.
That capability is becoming increasingly valuable, especially as variable wind and solar, local network constraints, and electrified heat reshape how the system is balanced. Heat networks are unusually well placed to provide part of it, because they combine large electrical loads, controllable generation and thermal storage in a single system, behind a single operator.
For an operator, flexibility shows up as demand side response, market participation, and smarter purchasing, but not as a change to the service customers receive.
Your heat pumps, boilers, CHP, thermal storage and controls provide the flexibility.
We optimise your assets based on heat demand, prices and grid conditions.
We automatically manage participation across the most valuable flexibility markets.
We handle dispatch, metering and settlement, protecting revenue and reducing compliance risk.
Heat supply always comes first. Thermal storage enables flexibility without affecting customer comfort, and every dispatch respects the operational limits agreed with you.
If delivering heat ever conflicts with market participation, heat delivery always takes priority. That principle is built into how the portfolio is scheduled, not added as an afterthought.
Flexibility is not only an operating revenue; it can strengthen the commercial case for investment. Flexible design can:
Designed-in flexibility can make better use of a lower-capacity grid connection, which matters wherever connection or reinforcement costs constrain a scheme. It also aligns naturally with the outcomes that capital programmes such as the Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF) and the Heat Network Efficiency Scheme (HNES) are built around: cost-effectiveness, efficient use of electrified heat, resilience and long-term value.
A flexibility assessment starts with a picture of what your network runs on and how it operates.
We'll typically ask for:
Don't have all this yet? That's fine. We can also support projects at the feasibility stage.
Whether you run an established network or are planning one, the next step is the same: a conversation about your assets, your constraints, and where flexibility could take them.
Yes. A heat network can participate where its assets can reliably reduce demand or generate during system stress events. Storage-backed heat pump turn-down, electric boiler load reduction, output can all qualify in principle; each site is assessed against delivery, metering and telemetry requirements before entering.
No, not when the scheme is designed and controlled properly. Thermal storage supplies heat while assets respond to market signals, so flexibility changes when heat is produced rather than whether it is delivered. Comfort limits and operating constraints are agreed in advance and enforced automatically in dispatch.
There is no fixed threshold. What matters is how much controllable electrical load or generation the network has, and how much thermal storage backs it. Aggregation through a Virtual Power Plant also allows smaller schemes to participate alongside other assets, reaching markets they could not enter alone.
Not strictly, but storage usually separates marginal value from material value. A correctly sized thermal store decouples heat production from demand for several hours, extends how long assets can respond to price and grid signals, and protects customers throughout. Networks without storage typically have far less freedom to shift generation.
