NorFlex Project (NODES, 2019-2023)

Two NODES clippings on the NorFlex demonstration project (nodesmarket.com), grouped:

1. “NorFlex project demonstrate integration to Statnett’s mFRR market” (Hallstein Hagen, 2022-01-11)
2. “NorFlex — White paper updated with data from last year’s trading” (Hallstein Hagen, 2023-06-26) Language: English

NorFlex is the predecessor to Norway’s current Euroflex local flexibility market — the NODES Norwegian demonstration project that ran ~2019/20–2023 and pioneered the simultaneous DSO + TSO (Statnett mFRR) use of local flexibility that Euroflex later productized as Armering. It explains the 2020–2023 Norwegian volumes visible on the NODES market dashboard.

Key facts

• Project: Enova-funded innovation/demonstration project (one of eight large-scale demos). Partners: Agder Energi (project owner), Glitre Energi, NODES, Statnett (the Norwegian TSO).
• Timeline: launched 2019. The Jan 2022 clipping states the project “runs from 2019 to the end of March 2022,” but the June 2023 white-paper update reports NorFlex “concluded its 4th year” — i.e. it continued through ~2023 (active roughly 2020–2023).
• First DSO+TSO trade (6 Jan 2022): 3 MW of flexibility from the NODES marketplace transacted into Statnett’s mFRR market — the first of its kind, activating flexibility from greenhouses. Grid companies (Agder Energi Nett, Glitre Energi) had traded local flexibility on NODES through 2021; the final phase tested aggregating unbought local flexibility into Statnett’s mFRR (minimum 1 MW blocks, via a regulatory exception). NODES forwarded Statnett’s e-bestill activation signals because Statnett is “not set up to manage small bid volumes.”
• Cumulative trading (to mid-2023, white paper): 1,394 MWh traded, representing >12 M NOK; >4,000 assets participated; smallest ShortFlex (activation) trade 1 kW, largest 5.4 MW; >30,000 activations demonstrated.
• Aggregators: Ishavskraft, Noova, Entelios, Tibber, Istadkraft, Futurehome, Glitre Energi Strøm, Volue, True Energi, LOS — testing independent aggregation, which Norwegian regulation did not yet formally provide for.

Significance

• Precursor to Euroflex + Armering: NorFlex pioneered offering local flexibility to both the local grid company and Statnett’s balancing market simultaneously. Euroflex’s Armering product (the contract is “armed” ~2 days ahead so capacity is withheld from Statnett only on days the DSO needs it) is the commercialized, productized version of this DSO+TSO value-stacking-without-double-activation mechanism. A concrete, working precedent for TSO-DSO Coordination — The Central Design Problem.
• Why Norway read “0 commercial LFM” in the 2025-03 study: NorFlex was an Enova-funded demonstration project, not a commercial market — consistent with the Nordic Energy Research 2025-03 classification. Euroflex (from 2024/25) is the commercial successor.
• Statnett small-bid problem: the raw says Statnett “is not set up to manage small bid volumes” (a regulatory exception allowed bids down to 1 MW only in the test period); NODES NODES aggregates local flexibility into ≥1 MW mFRR blocks and relays activation signals — the same architecture relevant to Sweden’s BSP aggregation and the paper-construction problem.

Note on source access

NODES’s full reports and white papers are not fully public — they are not linked in full in the clippings (the “web form” detail is not in the raw). The figures here are from the public news posts, not the underlying datasets; precise Euroflex/NorFlex levels remain partly gated.

Relevance to wiki

• NODES — NorFlex is the NODES Norwegian demonstration project; Euroflex the commercial successor
• Source - Euroflex Norwegian LFM (NODES, 2026) — the successor market; Armering = productized NorFlex DSO+TSO coordination
• TSO-DSO Coordination — The Central Design Problem — early concrete demonstration of DSO+TSO shared flexibility (mFRR integration)
• Balancing Markets — distributed local flexibility aggregated into Statnett mFRR (1 MW blocks)
• Aggregation — independent aggregation tested ahead of Norwegian regulation
• Source - Å Energi Transfers GridTools to NODES (2025) — GridTools, the DSO decision-support tool NODES absorbed from Å Energi in September 2025, was first released in 2016 with Agder Energi as its first customer — the same partner named here as NorFlex’s project owner. Agder Energi and Glitre Energi (both named above) merged into Å Energi in November 2022, so the 2025 GridTools transfer is a direct continuation of this project’s founding partnership, not a new relationship.