Background
Wholesale Fruit Centre Bristol is a major hub for fresh produce in the South West, with energy demands driven by refrigeration, lighting and round-the-clock operations.
As daylight hours increased into spring, their need for artificial lighting naturally dropped. Normally that’s just seen as lower consumption. We saw it as something more: unused capacity that could be offered back to the system at times when it’s under the most pressure.
What We Did
- Looked at the site’s half-hourly data to confirm how much lighting load was falling away.
- Enrolled that headroom into a flexibility arrangement with National Grid Electricity Distribution.
- Managed the whole process so the client didn’t need to change a thing.
Results
- £770 paid back to the client over the spring period.
- Zero operational effort required.
- Delivered additional capacity to the grid right when it was needed.
Client View
“We were pleasantly surprised that simply switching the lights on less as the days got brighter could put money back in our pocket. CUB handled the whole process and turned a seasonal change into extra revenue.”
— Facilities Manager, Wholesale Fruit Centre Bristol
Why It Matters
£770 on its own won’t transform a business. But this kind of approach adds up — especially when you look across multiple sites or different types of load. Seasonal changes, holiday shutdowns, or any periods when energy use naturally falls away can all be turned into value with the right structure in place.
What Wholesale Fruit Centre shows is that you don’t always need a battery or a big on-site project to get started. Sometimes the simplest shifts already sitting in the data can be enough to generate income and support the grid.
