Piclo, the leading independent marketplace for flexibility services, has today announced an international partnership with Energijos Skirstymo Operatorius (ESO), Lithuania’s largest distribution system operator (DSO). The new partnership launches with a strategic project designed to help ESO and prospective providers explore flexibility service procurement in Lithuania.
In accordance with the EU’s Clean Energy Package, ESO’s collaboration with Piclo seeks to explore local energy flexibility services as a cost-effective and efficient solution to the operation and development of decarbonising networks. Market participants will be encouraged to register details of their assets on Piclo Flex to better understand whether future flexibility requirements could be fulfilled. The project will run until 30 September 2022, after which both parties will then report findings and evaluate next steps.
ESO currently serves 1.8 million customers throughout Lithuania and now joins a cohort of leading DSOs, including UK Power Networks, using an independent marketplace as the enabler of flexible energy markets.
As part of the project, Piclo will engage its ecosystem of internationally focused flexibility service providers, as well as working alongside ESO to target those already based in Lithuania. Piclo successfully ran a similar project in Northern Ireland with Northern Ireland Electricity Networks (NIEN) in 2021.
Piclo has also today announced the appointment of Tom Saul as its first dedicated Chief Financial Officer. Tom brings more than 20 years of experience as CFO or Finance Director at a number of high-growth companies both in the UK and internationally, including 15 years focused on the energy sector. Most recently, Tom spent the last six years at Open Energi, a pioneering demand-side response business which was successfully sold to BP’s Launchpad tech incubator last year.
James Johnston, CEO and co-founder of Piclo, said:
“We’re all really looking forward to getting started on this project with ESO. It comes at an incredibly important time for Lithuania and Europe more broadly as our energy markets accelerate the shift towards renewables. This transition will require an equally rapid scaling of flexibility markets to open up new opportunities and ensure everyone has access to reliable, clean power, and this can only be achieved through greater collaboration and by proactively engaging the market.
We’re proud to officially launch this international partnership today and are confident that we will continue to build on this momentum both in the UK and internationally. To support our ambitions, I’m delighted to welcome Tom Saul as CFO who brings more than two decades of international experience and will help us to accelerate our next stage of growth.
Ina Vaitiekutė, Innovation Expert at ESO, said:
“As a forward-looking DSO, we are pleased to be partnering with Piclo to explore the potential for flexibility services to improve efficiencies in the operation and development of Lithuania’s distribution system. Our work together will help us to prepare a concept for flexibility services and we invite the market to actively participate in the development of this concept at this crucial moment for the energy sector.
Interested participants are invited to view further details and register online here: https://ltu.picloflex.com/