On 31st Augustthis year, National Grid published a Letter to the Industryto outline the process for the Auction Trial for Frequency Response, and hosted a webinar on 27thSeptember to provide further details.
The auction itself will have the following characteristics:
- The auction will be held every Friday morning and results will be published by early afternoon.
- The first available delivery window will start at 23:00 on the same day.
- Four products will be procured: high and low frequency dynamic response, and high and low frequency static response.
- The products will be auctioned by four-hourly Electricity Forward Agreement (EFA) blocks over the week.
- Buy orders will be published prior to the auction, and will consist of information on volume requirements to be procured for the following week.
- Bids will be accepted in price order without regard to the volume offered to reduce complexity and improve transparency.
- Providers will have the ability to specify bids as being fully or partially curtailable so that if their bid crosses the volume cap it can still be accepted at a lower volume.
- One provider may bid in for multiple products if the provision of the products is not mutually exclusive.
- All or nothing bids can also be specified within single EFA days for sequential blocks so that bids are only accepted if the full range are accepted.
National Grid will be looking to procure 50-150 MW of high and low frequency products through the auction trial. The project will be run through National Innovation Allowance funding, allowing National Grid to share their learning throughout the trial. The operational period of the trial will last 24 months. Ultimately, the goal is to move procurement of all balancing products closer to real time.
The current estimated date for delivery of the two-year trial has changed from this December to June 2019.
Once the contract details have been finalised National Grid will also be publishing the development timeline for the project so parties can see when each phase of the project is due for completion.
