As performers, audiences and visitors descended on the capital for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Edinburgh International Festival, SP Energy Networks (SPEN) prepared the city's electricity network to cope with one of its peak periods.

From major sporting fixtures and civic celebrations to severe weather and planned engineering, SPEN's teams work throughout the year to anticipate shifting demands and support customers, businesses and communities. Building resilience and maintaining reliability are daily priorities, with continual improvements made to strengthen the grid and ready it for changing requirements.

Behind the scenes, engineers, planners and operational staff monitor performance, carry out inspections and maintenance, develop contingency plans and deploy smart monitoring technologies to help keep power flowing for homes and businesses.

Drawing on local operational knowledge, teams reviewed contingency arrangements, resource availability and network risks ahead of the festivals, focusing on neighbourhoods that historically see high levels of activity and footfall.

Alongside established planning and operational measures, flexibility services were also made available as an extra tool for operational teams during the festival period.

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Following discussions between the Edinburgh District teams and the Flexibility Team, SPEN established its first flexibility service designed specifically to support a major event, providing additional back-up for an area serving around 20,000 customers across central Edinburgh.

Running every evening from 7pm to midnight throughout the festivals, the tender attracted more than 800 bids from providers using technologies such as batteries, electric vehicles and heat pumps.

SPEN secured 2MW of flexibility and successfully dispatched 136MWh of energy during the season—roughly equivalent to charging around 2,250 electric vehicles. With typical evening demand in the area at about 8MW during the summer, the flexibility covered around 25% of usual evening load.

The service was delivered via the ElectronConnect marketplace by providers including ScottishPower Retail and Octopus Energy, and sat alongside wider measures to bolster network resilience during one of Edinburgh's busiest annual periods.

David Climie, District General Manager for Edinburgh at SP Energy Networks, said: "Most people won't think about the electricity network when they're attending a show, visiting a venue or enjoying everything Edinburgh has to offer during festival season, but ensuring the network is ready to support that activity is an important part of our role.

"This year, flexibility services gave us another tool to support the network alongside the work our teams already carry out every day, helping ensure customers, businesses and visitors could continue to enjoy everything the city had to offer."

Flexibility is now a core element of how SPEN supports a resilient and reliable electricity system, complementing the operational approaches already used to prepare for major events, facilitate planned works, respond to severe weather and make best use of existing network capacity.

This festival period showcases how SPEN plans ahead, responds to evolving network needs and uses a range of tools to support customers, communities and large events. As the first flexibility service created specifically for a major event, it also highlights how flexibility could aid future planning for Hogmanay, Christmas markets and other times of heightened demand.

For more information on flexibility visit Flexibility Services - SP Energy Networks: www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/flexibility.aspx