Triads: Three is the magic number

Finding ways to save money can seem to be an arduous task, especially when you need to find a straight forward way to do it in your organisation.

There is a way. By reducing your usage during the upcoming Triad season, you could save substantial amounts of money.

For example customers like the Met Office and sites like hospitals, offices and research centres all managed their consumption during the 2014/15 Triad Period.  Each received their entire annual contribution back; this was on average £160K in March 2015.

Let’s start with quickly covering some basics

Triads are the three half-hours of highest demand (peaks) on the electricity transmission system between November and February each year. Triads must be at least 10 days apart.

Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) is a cost charged by the transmission network companies based on your site's electricity consumption during the three high demand peaks.   The cost differs depending on where you are in the country but on average every unit consumed during a Triad period costs about £40, yes that’s £40 a UNIT.  We’ve got some really useful information about TNUoS on our non-energy costs page. I also recommend watching our short film if you’d like to know more.  

How can we help you?

Managing consumption during Triad season is an excellent opportunity to reduce your overall energy bills. Sounds complicated? It’s not if you use our Market Insight service. You’ll get messages to warn you when we think they’ll be a Triad. This will make it easier to know when to reduce usage. 

Market Insight offers free online access to a Triad dashboard that can help you make the decisions in your organisation. 

It’s fast, accurate and easier than ever to use. You get control to manage Triads with:

New dashboard Features 

• Dedicated dashboard 

• Daily Triad Probability Report 

• Triad Probability Model explanation notes 

• Updated commentary from Optimisation 

• Triads warning saving calculator 

• Triads warning calculator instruction 

• Historical data report (last season PDF report)

Control Panel enhancement 

• Alerts preferences as SMS only, email only, SMS & email or none 

• Threshold preferences as either low risk and above, medium risk and above or high risk only

Not only can you sign up to the Triad warning service, you will also be able to access  the Non-Energy Cost Monitor report with forecasts, which can both help you to keep your eye on the other non-energy costs.

Put Market Insight to the test and see how much you could save this Triad season!

Useful links:

For more information read the ‘Transmission charges’ blog by Vicki Evans.

If you already have on-site generation or are interested, take a look at our new Electricity Market Reform white paper.

Contact our energy services team, who are on-hand to help CCS members explore and develop energy solutions that deliver long-term value.