'Virtual power station' ready for June launch

Run by Edinburgh-based Martin Energy, the service will use the electricity capacity of hundreds of diesel generators at factories and depots across the UK, at times when the national grid is not able to satisfy the UK's energy demand.

Managing director Alistair Martin said the company would go live with enough generators on line to add more than 3 megawatts to the national grid at times of extraordinary demand or production loss.

Companies holding generators with more than 8MW of capacity have signed up to the system. However, protracted negotiations with some distribution networks mean not all of the capacity will go live when the service is launched next year.

The national grid is obliged to have contingencies for underestimating energy consumption or the loss of a major generator.

While running large numbers of diesel generators for long periods is not an environmentally friendly, the system reduces the need for large scale projects to provide extra capacity.

Martin said the spare generators could be remotely started within minutes, selling the emergency capacity to the grid at premium price. The company estimates the capacity could be called online 70- 80 times a year, for as little as a few minutes at a time.

Martin said blue-chip companies' facilities, from supermarket depots to data centres, were among the first to sign up for the service. A large depot could expect to earn up to GBP 50,000 a year for signing up to the service, he said.

As well as improving the efficiency of under-utilised assets, Martin said that by using the generators more they would be less likely to fail in the event of an emergency.

"Companies with generators, if used regularly, get really good reliability, but if they neglect them and don't run them, between one third and half of them won't start in an emergency."