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| Welcome to your Stakeholder Update. The autumn event season is well and truly upon us... | |  | The month started with our sponsorship of the Greater Manchester Green Summit, an opportunity to continue to ignite climate action with a particular focus on biodiversity.
This month's newsletter is full off opportunities to come and meet us in person and online with a final opportunity to sign up to our annual regional stakeholder workshops and the launch of webinars on a new flexible services tender, accelerating connections and, ahead of the winter, there is still time for our communities to apply to the Storm Arwen Resilience Fund.
As the clocks change this weekend, we have brought in our winter working rules for planned power cuts and continue to promote our Extra Care Register to provide extra support to those in need in a planned and unplanned powercut.
You may have also seen or heard our Take Charge adverts during October. Take Charge is here to help you reduce your energy bills, get support with debt, access benefits and financial support, and even secure funding for energy efficient home improvements.
And finally, we are delighted to announce this year’s Powering our Communities Fund winners. We have awarded £83,054 to six projects which have all demonstrated widespread community engagement alongside activity which will deliver, or have the potential to deliver, carbon savings.
The successful organisations this year are Brookfield Spaceplace, Cleator Moor FC, The PROSPECTS Foundation, Community Energy Preston, South Lakeland Action on Climate Change and Deaf Rhinos.
Visit our website for more details about the successful projects.
In this month's newsletter...
Best wishes
The Stakeholder Engagement Team | | | | Less than a week to register for the first of our regional stakeholder workshops - don't miss out! | |  | Join Electricity North West’s Executive team and our stakeholder partners - our region’s county councils - at our Regional Stakeholder Workshops, for a knowledge sharing session to help us work together and plan for the low carbon energy future.
We will be hearing from Lancashire County Council, Westmorland & Furness Council, Cumberland Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority about their plans for investing in the region’s long-term economic development and we will share details of how we are investing in the region's electricity network in order to support these plans.
The events will encourage strategic understanding by providing the information and support we all need from each other on our journey to a connected network. We will be discussing:
- New strategic investments for the region
- Planning and investing in the electricity network for your future need
- New low carbon technologies and how we can help you get them connected
We also want to hear from you, our stakeholders. This is a workshop to share your ideas, experience and insight into how the day’s themes can lead to greater collaboration, partnering and better outcomes for the whole region and help inform our business decisions.
We particularly encourage major strategic users, local authority representatives and social housing providers in our region to join us, but of course all stakeholders are welcome. Lunch will be provided.
Register for one of our workshops now:
Please get in touch and share details with anyone you think may be interested by contacting stakeholderengagement@enwl.co.uk. | | | | Autumn 2023 Flexibility Tender - Launching Monday 30th October! | |  | Our Autumn flexibility tender is launching on Monday 30th October on the PicloFlex Platform, and we're delighted to share some upcoming changes that we hope will simplify the procurement process and increase market opportunities for providers. We will go into more detail about these changes in our tender launch newsletter later this month but in the meantime, we wanted to provide a brief overview so you know what to expect in our next tender round:
- Based on stakeholder feedback from our latest consultation, we have reduced our minimum flexible capacity requirement for directly contracted resources participating in our tenders from 50kW to 10kW.
- We will now accept alternative types of metering granularity such as half hourly metering in addition to minute-by-minute metering.
- We have removed the annual Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) registration requirement on Piclo. Company qualification is now only required once and any providers already approved on the DPS will not be required to submit a new DPS for future tenders.
- We will be adopting the new industry standard agreement V2.1
- Did you know that you can participate in our tenders and earn revenue from installing energy saving measures that reduce your long-term energy use? Find out more here.
- Technical pre-qualification (PQQ) and commercial pre-qualification (DPS) questionnaires will be streamlined and common across all DNOs.
If you have any questions regarding this tender, or about flexible services in general, please get in touch with our team at flexible.contracts@enwl.co.uk. You can book in for a complimentary one-to-one discussion to discuss the process of providing flexible services to the network. Why not join our mailing list to receive regular updates? | | | | Accelerating connections webinar | You may be aware from the media that there are issues affecting the speed by which customers can connect to the network. We are pleased to invite you to a webinar to learn more about a number of cross-industry initiatives that are being developed to try to unlock capacity and speed up connections.
This webinar will provide:
- An overview of the initiatives being undertaken by Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) and the Electricity System Operator (ESO)
- A focus on one of these initiatives known as ‘Technical Limits’
- The ‘Technical Limits’ initiative has the potential to allow connections that are being delayed waiting for Transmission work to be completed before they connect to advance their connection date.
This webinar take place on Monday 30 October 2023 from 1:00pm to 2:00pm online and is open to all interested parties, and we encourage you to register today.
To register, please click here: Register for a Connections event (enwl.co.uk)
Check out our new strategic connections web pages HERE. | | | Invitation to DSO Functions: DFES, Data and Flexible Services webinar | We would like to invite you to our webinar DSO Functions: DFES, Data and Flexible Services on Wednesday 8 November 2023 from 10:00am to 12:00pm.
In this webinar, we'll dive deep into our Distribution Future Electricity Scenarios and the data we publish, showing you how to use it to make informed decisions about your connections, operations, and trades on the network. Through worked examples and case studies, you'll gain practical knowledge of what our data means and how to use it to your advantage.
In addition, we’ll be discussing our latest flexibility tender and how to get involved!
Register today: DSO Functions: DFES, Data and Flexible Services Tickets, Wed 8 Nov 2023 at 10:00 | Eventbrite
We look forward to seeing you there! | | | Storm Arwen Community Resilience Fund | Briefing session (online, via Zoom) - Tuesday 7th November 2023, 6.00pm to 7.30pm.
Electricity North West, launched the £500,000 Storm Arwen Community Resilience Fund for groups that support local communities impacted by Storm Arwen in 2021, for 72 hours or more, in the counties of Cumbria, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and surrounding areas. The grants will enable communities to be better prepared for and more resilient to future emergency and/or extreme weather events.
The funding is being distributed via Cumbria Community Foundation. ACTion with communities in Cumbria are working directly with groups in the affected area, supporting them to make applications.
Further information about the fund, including details of eligible postcode areas, please visit the website: https://www.cumbriafoundation.org/fund/enwl-storm-arwen-community-resilience-fund/
Please note, upcoming application deadlines are as follows: 10/11/2023, 02/02/2024 and 19/04/2024
Join the Zoom meeting HERE. | | | Invitation to shape our community and local energy strategy | We are developing a new community and local energy strategy for this business plan period (April 23-March 28) and we want your input.
Please join us for a webinar on 29 Nov 2023 from 3:00pm to 4:30pm to help shape our plans. We want to share with you what we have heard from talking to amazing communities across our region who are working hard on their energy projects and ask what else we can do to help. We know from talking to you some of the things you need from us but we want to find out more about what we can be doing.
Please come along and share your views: https://re-url.uk/WYCB | |  | | Green Summit 2023 - Electricity North West were headline sponsors at this month's Greater Manchester Green Summit. | | The event saw over 1000 people in attendance plus 2500 views online, making Green Summit 2023 the busiest and most collaborative to date. With over 70 exhibitors and over 80 speakers and 21 sessions sharing ideas and solutions to help accelerate change. There was also over 100 young people from schools and colleges offering fresh perspectives on how to tackle the challenges facing us.
Electricity North West's Biodiversity Manager, Richard Mosson, reflected: "This year’s GM Green Summit presented an excellent opportunity to connect and network with potential partners, amplify the message of our biodiversity project and communicate it more widely with the population of the Greater Manchester region.
"It was noticeable, particularly during the main stage talks, that there was a distinct focus on biodiversity commitments for the region this year. This is particularly welcome because it reinforces the validity of biodiversity planning within the Electricity North West business to support the GM region, and secondly it was evident there was clear recognition that biodiversity requirements overlap and are increasingly crucial to help deliver on the region’s net zero commitment." | | |  | | Bee Net Zero Partnership - Helping Greater Manchester businesses become greener | | The Bee Net Zero partnership was formed to make Greater Manchester the easiest place to become a net zero business. By bringing together a comprehensive network of support from partners and stakeholders across the region, Bee Net Zero aims to be a one-stop shop for trusted support in this space.
If your business is thinking about taking steps to become more sustainable, Bee Net Zero partners are here to help.
First, watch these videos from Greater Manchester Combined Authority which showcase how the region is successfully decarbonising public buildings and saving money on energy bills.
Then, take a look at Bee Net Zero partner Green Economy’s Net Zero Toolkit, which offers free resources to help you get started on your sustainability journey.
To learn more about the partnership visit www.beenetzero.co.uk | | | | £1m win for net zero projects | Two projects which will tackle energy efficiency and decarbonisation challenges across the North West have been awarded significant funding.
After successfully advancing through the initial stage of Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund, Electricity North West’s Net Zero Terrace and RetroMeter projects have been awarded a further £1m.
Read more HERE. | | | ADHD Awareness month and new Colleague Resource Group announced | ADHD, which stands for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is a neurodivergent condition that affects both children and adults worldwide. It is something that is often stereotypically associated with hyperactivity, lack of focus and ‘disruptive behaviour’ particularly in school. However, people with ADHD are also creative problem-solvers, capable of deep focus on tasks that interest them, and bring innovation to their work.
ADHD is a type of neurodiversity that affects every aspect of life, and many people don’t realise they have it until they’re much older. Women in particular are thought to be underdiagnosed due to misconceptions about what ADHD ‘looks like’, who it affects etc.
October is ADHD Awareness Month, which is a time to reflect on what ADHD is, how it affects people, and celebrate neurodiversity in general.
We have recently set up a new ‘Colleague Resource Group’ specifically for neurodiverse colleagues. Neurodiversity also includes conditions such as autism and dyslexia. The group's aims include raising awareness across the organisation and offering support to neurodiverse colleagues. | |
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