Demand Response After TRIAD: What Changes

For many years, large UK electricity users structured their energy strategies around TRIAD avoidance. By reducing electricity consumption during the three winter peak periods when national demand was highest, businesses could significantly reduce their transmission network charges.

However, the TRIAD system ended in 2023 as part of Ofgem’s Targeted Charging Review (TCR) reforms to electricity network charging.

This change marks a shift in how businesses manage peak demand, network charges and flexibility opportunities.

Instead of focusing on avoiding three specific half-hour periods, organisations now need to consider broader demand response and flexibility strategies

TRIAD referred to the three half-hour settlement periods with the highest electricity demand between November and February.

These periods were used to calculate a major component of Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) charges for large electricity users. Because TRIAD charges depended on how much electricity a business used during these peaks, companies could reduce costs by:

• Temporarily reducing consumption

• Switching to onsite generation

• Using energy storage or backup systems
  
  

This practice became known as TRIAD avoidance.

Reducing demand during these periods could significantly lower network charges for the following year.

Over time, businesses became increasingly effective at predicting and avoiding TRIAD periods.

While this helped some large electricity users reduce costs, regulators believed it created an uneven system where:

• Some consumers could avoid network charges

• Others had to carry a larger share of the cost
  
  

To address this, Ofgem introduced the Targeted Charging Review (TCR).

The reforms removed the demand-based TRIAD residual charge and replaced it with fixed charging bands based on capacity and metering type, applied as a standing charge rather than being tied to specific peak periods.

The result is that TRIAD avoidance as a cost-reduction strategy is largely no longer possible.

Although the TRIAD mechanism has ended, the need to manage electricity demand during peak periods has not disappeared.  Instead, the focus has shifted toward flexibility markets and demand response programmes. These include:

• Demand Side Response (DSR)

• Capacity Market participation

• Grid balancing services

• Flexibility programmes run by aggregators or system operators
  
  

Rather than simply avoiding three peak events, businesses can now participate in programmes that reward them for adjusting consumption or providing flexibility when the grid needs it.

Demand response allows businesses to reduce or shift electricity consumption when requested by the grid operator or energy market. Typical demand response actions include:

• Temporarily reducing load

• Shifting production schedules

• Exporting electricity from onsite generation

• Using battery storage to supply power
  
  

These actions help balance supply and demand on the grid. In return, organisations can receive payments or revenue for providing flexibility services.

For many companies, demand response now represents a more consistent and predictable opportunity than the old TRIAD avoidance strategy.

The end of TRIAD changes how organisations approach energy cost management.

Previously, strategies often focused on predicting and avoiding a handful of peak events each winter.

Today, the emphasis is shifting toward:

Flexibility

Businesses with flexible operations can participate in grid services and receive payments for reducing or shifting demand.

Data and monitoring

Continuous monitoring of consumption and market conditions helps identify opportunities to respond to grid signals.

Integrated energy management

Companies increasingly combine demand response with:

• Battery Storage

• Onsite renewable generation

• Energy optimisation systems
  
  

Together, these tools allow businesses to respond dynamically to electricity market conditions.

In a post-TRIAD environment, understanding market signals and grid conditions has become more important.

Businesses need visibility over:

• Market price movements

• System demand signals

• Flexibility opportunities
  
  

Tools such as Nationwide Utilities’ Insights platform help monitor these factors and alert organisations to opportunities to participate in demand response or optimise procurement decisions.

Market triggers tend to deliver the most value for organisations that:

• Purchase energy through flexible contracts

• Have large consumption volumes

• Need to manage budget risk

• Operate across multiple sites
  
  

They are particularly useful when markets are volatile or uncertain.

The removal of TRIAD marks a shift away from short-term peak avoidance toward continuous energy flexibility and smarter demand management.

For businesses with large electricity consumption, the opportunity now lies in:

• Participating in flexibility markets

• Optimising consumption through data and monitoring

• Integrating onsite energy technologies
  
  

Organisations that adapt their strategy can still unlock significant value from managing demand - without the old TRIAD incentives and making use of powerful insight platforms.