NESO's new balancing platform delivered 44% and 54% of plan as an Azure move slowed tests

Victoria Shinder13 October 2026, 06:542 min read

Great Britain's system operator NESO has published the closure report for delivery increments DI24 and DI25 of its Open Balancing Platform (OBP), the system the control room is moving onto from legacy balancing tools. The report covers the period from 22 April to 14 July 2026.

The numbers. At the start of DI24 the programme committed to 68 features and enablers and completed 30, or 44% of plan. For DI25 it committed to 59 and completed 32, or 54%. Both are below the programme's own predictability target of at least 80% of committed features. NESO reports the two increments together because a large part of DI24's scope was carried into DI25.

Why. The report names one main cause: the migration of test environments from National Grid to NESO's own Azure environment, which stopped some work from moving through testing into production. It also moved the goal of a P1-ready platform from 31 July to 31 August 2026, because failover scenarios could not be tested in time. Ten features not finished in DI25 were completed early in DI26 after a small number of blocking defects were cleared.

What did go live. Functionality for grid code modification GC0166 reached the control room, letting market participants submit the new MDO and MDB battery parameters. The integration with the PEF forecasting system met its Ofgem milestone and is in production. Reserve volumes are now protected inside optimisation, so the control room can dispatch efficiently while holding the required reserve margin, and dispatch of MVAR and voltage instructions was delivered and made available for training. Pumped-storage rapid start and editable start times are live.

What did not. No additional participants completed market-participant testing for the EDL/EDT transition to OBP during the two increments; NESO says engagement continued and network changes were made to enable more testing. Pumped-storage notifications and a power-available feature for wind dispatch were the elements left out of one of the dispatch objectives.

Why it matters. The report notes that legacy systems are due to become read-only this financial year, so OBP has to support all of dispatch. The pace of increments like these is what determines when that switch can safely happen.

Source: NESO, "Balancing Programme: OBP Delivery Increment (DI) 24-25 Closure Report" — https://www.neso.energy/balancing-programme-di-closure-report-24-25