Creating interoperable DSR for a smoother green transition

Demand side response (DSR) will play a big role in the journey to net zero. With more intelligent energy management in homes and businesses, we’ll be able to rely more on renewable energy – and end our dependence on fossil fuels even quicker.

That’s why the UK government’s Interoperable DSR Programme is so important. It’s a project run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) that brings together a number of pioneers in DSR technology, including Centrica’s DSR team.

The aim is to collaborate on defining the technical standards that will allow DSR-enabled devices to work seamlessly with all the DSR providers that will operate them on behalf of consumers in years to come.

Building a platform for tomorrow’s greener, smarter homes

In the future, every home will have all sorts of DSR-enabled devices, intelligently managing when and how energy is used and stored. And it won’t just be the heat pumps and EV chargers we know today – DSR is likely to be built into things we can’t even imagine yet.

But the success of DSR depends on its ease of use. Devices made by different manufacturers need to talk to the systems used by many DSR providers in a competitive DSR market without hitches and glitches. And changing DSR providers needs to be as simple for consumers as switching between energy companies is today.

The work of the Interoperable DSR Programme is an important step towards creating an experience for end users that’s seamless and simple, while also offering the highest levels of privacy and cyber-security. We’re proud to be part of it.

Playing our part

Our involvement in the programme comprises of us modifying our existing DSR platform to bring it into alignment with the architecture set out in the new DSR technical standards (the Publicly Available Standard or PAS 1878). This will underpin the technical interoperability of Energy Smart Appliances (ESAs) with DSR service providers when it is adopted in 2026. Through testing this architecture within our own systems, we hope to learn about the effectiveness of the proposed standard and feed this back to DESNZ through the programme.

We are proud to be working with several of our technology partners to connect different ESAs to our DSR platform in order to take part in this programme, including Daikin heat pumps, Glen Dimplex storage heaters, British Gas fleet EVs and Mixergy hot water tanks.

Want to know more

This is just one of the industry projects we’re involved in that will help shape the future of DSR. If you’d like to know more, just share your details below and one of our experts will be in touch.