MVS A Procedural Learnings

The minimum viable system (MVS) concept is used within Project LEO as an agile approach to developing and testing new flexibility services, business models and procedures required to operate a local flexibility market. Through the MVS approach, new value can be identified at a small scale before significant investment is committed; it is intended as a way to manage the risks associated with innovation in an uncertain, changing environment.

This report details the procedural issues, learnings and implemented changes arising from the ‘MVS A – Flexibility Trials’ which ran between October 2019 and January 2020. The service procedure for identification, delivery and validation consists of 14 steps and was initially proposed at an internal WP3 workshop held on the 30th of July (2019) at Piclo’s London office.

Initially 4 different flexibility types have been identified based on currently available assets: 1) Electrical Storage, 2) Flexible Generation, 3) Demand Side Response and 4) Aggregation.

Over the course of these trials, a trial implementation framework has evolved which ensures learnings are captured for each stage of the flexibility procedure. This includes an assessment of process maturity, a useful metric for accessing the value added through the increased automation of each MVS procedural step.

Despite some of the trials resulting in a ‘failure to deliver, trialing the procedure itself has been successful in providing some key learnings and modifications from issues that arose.

Two key themes to highlight are: 1) the need for a protocol for bi-directional communication between participants to notify changes in operational status; 2) a framework setting out the consequences for failures and/or delays to deliver, including possible penalties for service providers and the resulting dispatch of secondary services where available.