Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of exempting operators of electricity storage from balanced services use of system charges.

Network charging, including balancing services use of system charges, is a matter for Ofgem as the independent regulator. Ofgem published a consultation on a Targeted Charging Review in March 2017, also setting out its views on network charges for storage. These views are that storage should not face demand residual charges at transmission and distribution level, and should not face two sets of balancing system charges. Industry has since brought forward code modification proposals, including one addressing balancing charges, and these are currently going through the industry codes modification process.