To work as a sole applicant or lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, a research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit, public sector organisation, or academic institution.

You are encouraged to consider how collaborations could strengthen your route to impact within a 2030 timeframe. For example, inclusion of end users is highly recommended, and you will be asked to justify how you will achieve impact if they are not included. You must also ensure you have appropriate energy system experience within your consortia, as without evidence of this it is unlikely that projects could achieve real world impact by 2030, which is a key aspect of the scope.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

You must ensure that no one partner accounts for more than 70% of the total eligible costs.

A business of any size or a research and technology organisation (RTO) can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

If an organisation or business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

If you would like to find collaboration partners, Innovate UK Business Connect (IUKBC)’s matchmaking tool will be open throughout the duration of the competition. You can also contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Energy team for help to find a collaboration partner.

Your project must:

• have a total grant funding request of between £100,000 and £3 million, depending on which research category you are applying through
• last between 4 and 30 months
• start by 1 January 2027
• end by 30 June 2029

Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

Projects are divided into 3 categories based on how close your project is to market:

Category 1: Feasibility studies (up to £500,000 total funding, per project, 6 months maximum)

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

Category 2: Industrial research projects (up to £1 million total funding, per project, 24 months maximum)

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

Category 2: Experimental development projects which are nearer to market (up to £3 million total funding, per project, 30 months maximum)

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Note that for projects that exceed 12 months in duration, we may apply an interview stage as part of the assessment.

Capital equipment may be requested within the grant funding, but you will need to justify how it is proportionate to the funds available, and the scale of flexibility you anticipate your project will enable.

This competition is part of the Consumer Led Flexibility (CLF) Challenge within the Clean Energy Superpower Mission (CESM), which is part of the UKRI R&D Missions Accelerator Programme.

The aim of this competition is to support businesses and innovators who are developing novel AI and digital solutions and other innovative product and service solutions. This competition will accelerate consumer led flexibility and scale to system adoption by 2030.

We are looking for outcome focussed projects. You must provide strong evidence for how you will contribute to or enable the target of at least two Gigawatts (GW) of additional flexibility on the system by 2030. This is specifically to contribute to the National Energy System Operator’s (NESO) target of 10-12 GW of demand turn down during a winter peak.

Your proposal must develop solutions that enable flexible loads to be better utilised in system operation. Proposals should demonstrate clear staged CLF outcomes, credible commercial pathways and strong knowledge sharing plans. Learnings should then inform future CLF policy, regulation and investment decisions across the wider system.

We are anticipating a high level of interest in this programme, and UKRI reserves the right to reject any applications which we feel do not clearly align to the scope of this competition. Applicants must sufficiently justify how this funding will enable novel innovations rather than duplicate existing activity.

Your project will be reviewed internally by the UKRI team before being sent for assessment. Your project may be rejected if you cannot clearly justify how you align with the specific themes and how you will achieve increased winter peak demand reduction through CLF within the 2030 timeframe. We are aware that some themes may be addressed in isolation and others in combination and are open to submissions using either approach.

You must review the attached document which provides specific details against the key themes within this competition:

CLF June competition additional pdf document on themes.pdf (opens in a new window)

Your project must focus on one or more of the key themes. You can focus on multiple themes within the same strand or across both strands. The expectation is that any strand 2 project will need to draw on elements of strand 1 themes in the approach in order to address barriers and align with system needs.

Strand 1: Software first approach

• 1. Multi-market co-optimisation and locational pricing
• 2. Portfolio reliability and risk transfer
• 3. Confidence and AI forecasting
• 4. Feeder level flexibility and resilience
• 5. Electric Vehicle smart charging and Vehicle to everything (V2X)
• 6. Heat flexibility with comfort guarantees
• 7. Open datasets for AI

Strand 2. Demand segments

• 8. Low income households in constrained areas
• 9. Industrial and commercial anchor loads
• 10. Residential scaling

An online briefing will be held from 10.30am-noon on Monday 22 June: click here to register for a place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

25 June 2026, 1:30pm-3pm: Surgery session 1 with Innovate UK Business Connect: register to attend (online)

21 July 2026, 10.30am-noon: Surgery session 2 with Innovate UK Business Connect: register to attend (online)

Convening days with Catapults

There will also be two distinct in-person ‘convening days’: one focussed on the strand 1: Software First aspect on 15 July 2026 and one focussed on the industrial and commercial theme within strand 2: Demand Segments on 8 July 2026.

8 July 2026, 10am-4pm: First convening day: register to attend (at Connected Places Catapult, 1 Sekforde St., London EC1R 0BE)

15 July 2026, 10am-4pm: Second convening day: register to attend (at Digital Catapult, 101 Euston Road, Euston Road, London, NW1 2RA)

As part of a wider programme of work, we anticipate working with the Energy Systems and Digital Catapults who can provide business and scale up support, as well as access to resources such as trial type environments. The Catapults can offer a range of services, including specific activities and tools such as those detailed below, which applicants could consider taking advantage of.

There are two packages of support available:

• package one: Trials and testing support services; you would need to consult with the Catapults in advance so that costs can be appropriately considered, the costs should be explained in the narrative costs question of the application and do not count towards the project thresholds for this competition, as we will put in place a separate funding mechanism if they are approved
• package two: Scale up support services; does not require bespoke costing, these will be scoped with successful applicants on selection, so there is no need to contact the Catapults in advance for this

Applicants should consider how this, as well as how any other scale up support, will enable you to achieve outcomes by 2030.

Package one

You will need to reach out to the Catapults through this Microsoft form to discuss your needs and costing into the application. Under the case of high demand, we plan to use a triage based prioritisation system. When submitting an application, you should set out what you could achieve with, and without, this support. Package one services include:

• The Catapult Living Lab: This delivers real world consumer testing in digitally connected homes. It provides the technical certainty and data required to prove consumer acceptance, behavioural response, and automated load shifting while validating required comfort and wellbeing guarantees. Ideal for innovators needing to de-risk their consumer value proposition, evidence real world trial outcomes, and build a bankable investment case for funders.
• Catapult Whole Energy Systems Architecture (WESA): This delivers grid level testing by linking real home environments directly to physical electricity networks and control infrastructure. It validates multi-market value stacking, portfolio reliability, and network constraint management under strict grid conditions without risk to the live system. Ideal for innovators needing to prove future proofed, multi-Megawatt system scale viability to the grid by 2030.

Package two

These services will be scoped with successful applicants after bid submission. Applicants therefore do not need to cost this into their bids but should explain how this support would enable them to achieve desired outcomes. Support is likely to be offered in the form of focus time with experts, with indicative amounts available in the Package 2 Menu of services.pdf (opens in a new window). For example, this may include commercial strategy and technical advisory support.

Engagement opportunities

To support potential applicants to build strong proposals with the right partners that are well aligned to the scope we are facilitating a series of engagement activities. These are detailed in the briefing and supporting events section above.

Innovate UK Business Connect (IUKBC)’s matchmaking tool will be open throughout the duration of the competition.

These convening events are designed to help prospective applicants connect with potential collaborators, develop and test project ideas, and strengthen their approach to this opportunity.

Both events will create space for focused discussion, early stage partnership building and practical insight to support the development of competitive, high quality applications.

During the event, participants will have opportunities to:

• meet potential collaborators from across industry, academia, public sector and the innovation ecosystem
• develop and test project ideas, share capabilities and identify areas of interest relevant to the funding call
• explore partnership opportunities through facilitated networking and structured discussion
• gain practical insight to help shape a strong, well positioned application

Who should attend the Catapult convening days?

These events are intended for organisations considering a submission to this opportunity and looking to build or strengthen a collaborative proposal. This may include businesses, researchers, technology developers, delivery partners and others with relevant expertise, assets or routes to deliver impact.

These days are not compulsory, and attendees will not be prioritised for funding, they are designed to provide support for those that need it. To attend these days, you must complete the sign up form which includes a description of why you would like to attend. We anticipate this offering to be popular, so we may need to use your answers to select attendees based on alignment with the competition and if multiple people from the same organisation register to attend, we may reach out to ask for one or two representatives.

Disclaimer for the Catapult convening days

These sessions are designed to support networking, consortium development and application readiness. They are not a substitute for the formal competition guidance, eligibility criteria or application documentation, which applicants should review separately as part of their preparation.

In the case that we exceed capacity for these events, we will prioritise registrants that are working on or planning to work on a submission into this opportunity, and we reserve the right to limit the numbers of registrants coming from the same organisation.

See the services available for scaling up from the Catapults here.