Three markets are running it at scale, each in a different way: Britain pays for it, Abu Dhabi mandates it, and Australia is rebuilding its market rules around it.
Britain's Demand Flexibility Service started in late 2022 to shave winter evening peaks, and from November 2024 it has run all year. Abu Dhabi's Department of Energy updated its demand-side management regulations in 2025 under a strategy that runs to 2030. Australia's Australian Energy Market Operator dispatches demand-side response alongside generation, and its network businesses are funding flexible residential load directly.
Table 1: Utilities supporting demand-side management today. Programmes running in 2024 and 2025, and what each one does for solar.
The Demand Flexibility Service is the clearest example of a scheme that grew out of a winter emergency into a standing part of the system.
Yes, and South Australia has a full year of evidence for it. The PLUS ES demand flexibility trial re-timed electric hot-water systems so they heat in the middle of the day instead of overnight. Across the year to June 2024 the share of hot-water load falling in the daytime averaged in the mid forties as a percentage, and the daily figure ranged between about 32 and 55 percent.
The pattern matters more than any single day. The daytime share sat around 42 to 45 percent through the first months, stepped up from the middle of November, and settled into a higher and steadier band of roughly 47 to 52 percent by the second half of the trial, as more systems were enrolled and the control settings were tuned.
Figure 1: Daily percentage of shifted hot-water load falling in the daytime period, July 2023 to June 2024. Monthly average with the range of daily values behind it.
Re-timing hot water is attractive because the storage is already installed. A hot-water cylinder is a battery that most homes already own, and moving when it heats costs the customer nothing in comfort.
Four of them, and the timing is what makes them useful. Hot water, electric vehicle charging, smart appliances and home batteries can all be pushed into the middle of the day, when rooftop solar pushes net demand on the grid down into the trough that operators call the duck curve.
The shape is the point. Net demand falls through the morning as solar output rises, bottoms out around midday, then climbs sharply into the evening peak when the sun goes down and people come home. Filling the midday trough and flattening the evening peak is exactly what demand-side management is for.
Figure 2: Hot water and electric vehicle load shifting to soak up solar and avoid peak demand. How flexible loads move into the midday solar window and away from the evening peak across a day.
Three levers, in rising order of how much the customer has to think about it.
The four below, each proved in a live programme rather than a model.
Table 2: Strategies that maximise solar integration through demand-side management. Source: as linked in each row.
Rules that make flexibility settleable, and in one market compulsory. Each of the three markets has taken a different route to the same end.
Table 3: Regulatory support for demand-side management by market.
Through alerts the customer can act on, and data the utility can dispatch against.
On digital engagement, Britain's Demand Flexibility Service sends notice about 24 hours ahead by text message and app, and provider participation exceeded 80 percent during early test events paying 3 pounds or more per kilowatt hour, on the National Energy System Operator's reporting.
On real-time data, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority's Distribution Network Smart Centre integrates advanced metering, rooftop solar from the Shams Dubai programme and electric vehicle charger data in real time, which improves dispatch visibility.
Metering, control platforms and market plumbing, all of which are now in place rather than in prospect.
As firm capacity, which is the clearest sign that it has stopped being a pilot.
The Australian Energy Market Operator counts 2 gigawatts of responsive demand in its 2025 to 2035 Integrated System Plan. The Emirates Water and Electricity Company treats demand response as an avoided capacity investment in its long-term electricity planning. Britain's system operator forecasts multi-gigawatt demand-side flexibility as essential to integrating a large renewables fleet by 2030, in its Beyond 2030 investment plan.
Demand-side management is the cheapest way to make room for more of it. Paying for flexibility, automating the devices that can move, and counting demand response as capacity in long-term plans all reduce curtailment and the need for fossil back-up at the same time. The three markets here arrived by different routes, but the finding is the same: a gigawatt of load that can be moved is worth more to a solar-heavy grid than a gigawatt of plant that can only be switched on.
The full publication sets out the programme detail behind this analysis, including the expert question and answer section on regulation, coordination and long-term planning. It is available through the preview link on this page.
I was delighted that MCC's work was completed on time, and within budget, helping us deliver important changes and improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders. MCC's report is published on the CCC website.
I am delighted to recommend MCC Economics. Specifically, I worked closely with PJ, who helped us with our Nuclear and CCUS projects. PJ helped us develop new policies and answer questions from our stakeholders. His support helped us deliver important changes and improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders.
MCC Economics has helped us better understand the most important issues for our stakeholders, including: charges, shareholder returns, debt payments and inflation impacts.
I am delighted to recommend PJ and his team at MCC Economics. We've been working together on National Policy Statements to help meet net zero targets for 2030 and 2050. We initially appointed MCC Economics to support us on offshore wind consultation analysis and have recently reappointed MCC Economics to undertake a larger consultation analysis role across all sectors, including hydrogen, CCUS and networks. I can confirm that PJ and his team have shown excellent spreadsheet skills, alongside very good project management, planning and analysis skills, helping us deliver important changes, and continuous improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders.
I am delighted to recommend PJ and his team from MCC Economics. They helped us with our price controls for Heathrow airport and for NATS (En Route) plc (the air traffic services provider). Specifically, the MCC team helped us deliver important changes and improvements to our financial models and supporting policy documents, to the benefit of our stakeholders.
I am delighted to confirm that I worked with PJ on a retail project in 2015. The project helped stakeholders understand electricity costs and charges. Specifically, the project helped us explain to stakeholders, internally and externally, why electricity charges differed across the regions (GB, NI & Ireland). PJ was a key member on the project team, which helped deliver changes and improvements in the understanding of energy retail.
.png)
Evidence-based analysis for transparent, defensible, and effective decision-making.
© All rights reserved – MCC Economics 2026.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)