RNP Industry Expert Panel (IEP) – Balancing, Settlement & Dispatch Reforms

NESO is leading the Balancing, Settlement & Dispatch reform workstream in RNP. The proposed balancing reforms have been developed with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, as well as Ofgem, to improve the operational efficiency of the system under a national wholesale market with self-dispatch.  We are further developing dispatch reform proposals, which will be shared with industry in due course. 

The purpose of this IEP is to provide the insights and evidence required to effectively assess the design, and plan for the implementation, of the balancing and dispatch reforms. This collaborative approach will help to ensure that proposed market reforms maximise value for consumers and the system, while minimising design and delivery risks. It’s vital that we work with an appropriate cross-representation of the electricity market landscape to ensure that all costs, benefits, impacts and implementation considerations are taken into account. The IEP is just one of the ways we will engage with electricity market participants.

The IEP is an advisory panel and will not have a decision-making role, therefore all panel members may not agree with the ultimate decisions made by this RNP workstream. IEP discussions will not focus on whether or not these reforms should be implemented, but rather on how they would be implemented, and what the impacts would be on the revenues, costs and systems of the different segments of the market.

The scope of the IEP will cover all proposed balancing and dispatch reforms. It’s expected that the IEP will provide feedback, insights and evidence to support:

  • Detailed market design
  • Cost benefit analyses
  • Code and licence changes
  • An implementation roadmap for the sector
  • Impact assessments by market segment
  • How reforms are communicated more broadly to industry

The IEP launched in April 2026 and will run in phases. The first phase is the design phase and will run until late 2026. The panel will then transition to feeding into the implementation phase of whatever is decided.

This webpage will keep you updated on the timetable as well as the key discussion points and conclusions of the IEP, and we’ll publish all documents here, including pre-reads, presentation packs and meeting summaries. If you have any further questions regarding the RNP balancing or dispatch reforms, or about the work of the panel, please send them to [email protected]

Below you can find out more about who’s on the panel, (amended from first IEP meeting) which will show members of the panel, summary of TOR and timeline to recommendation.

IEP Meeting Slides

IEP Terms of Reference

Proposed balancing reforms

Reform Description
Lower mandatory Balancing Mechanism (BM) participation threshold
  • Increase NESO’s visibility of and access to balancing resources: better coordination of resources to meet system needs; lower balancing costs through more efficient dispatch and increased competition; and increased system security. 
Align market trading deadline and BM Gate Closure
  • This reform would reverse Balancing and Settlement Code (BSC) modification P342. Currently, the market trading deadline is at the start of the Settlement Period (SP).​
  • Provide more certainty on the actions required post-Gate Closure, as wholesale market trading and NESO balancing actions are no longer occurring simultaneously. 
Final Physical Notifications (FPN’s) to match traded position
  • Prevent market participants from intentionally taking an imbalanced position at Gate Closure to benefit from exposure to the imbalance price, removing the risk that NESO takes actions based on FPNs that do not reflect the market traded position.​
  • Ahead of Gate Closure, aggregated traded positions would be made visible to NESO to provide a better forecast of the upcoming market position, or where to expect that PNs might change as the market trades out an imbalanced position. 
Unit-level bidding
  • Require market participants to provide unit-level bids and offers in the day-ahead and intraday markets, instead of the portfolio-level participation that exists today, associating economic offers in these markets with specific units.​
  • This reform would support requiring FPNs to match traded positions, facilitate scheduling enhancements and increase transparency to better support Ofgem and NESO’s investigation of behaviour that exploits inefficiencies in the market. 
Shorter Settlement Period (SP)
  • Reduce the SP length to 5 or 15 minutes, to provide better temporal price signals to market participants to resolve energy imbalances.​
  • Shortening the SP provides a more granular imbalance signal, incentivising more shape in market parties' trading to better match the demand curve and other behaviours, like fast ramping of interconnectors, BESS and demand-side flexibility.