The first mock Enduring Auction Capability (EAC) Auction occurred on 27 September. National Grid ESO is running trials of the new auction before it begins in October. The mock allowed participants to try new bidding strategies and offer negative prices for the first time.
Once launched, the EAC will majorly change bidding for Dynamic Containment, Regulation, and Moderation. It will also allow systems to deliver a combination of these three services for the first time.
You can learn more about these new additions in our EAC bidding explainer and bidding strategy deep dive from August.
Participants make use of new auction capabilities
Twenty-five companies participated in the mock auction, with over half trying out the new Substitute Child bids. In total, over 3GW of bids were made across all services. Some optimizers, including Habitat and EDF used the new option to split bids across multiple services.
We also saw negative clearing prices for ancillary services in EFA 1 of DMH and DRH. With this being a mock auction, we won’t read too much into the actual clearing prices, but the new opportunity for negatively priced bids is a brand-new feature from the EAC.
The launch of the Enduring Auction Capability is still on track for October
National Grid ESO will run two more mock auctions. The EAC goes live in October, with the first auctions scheduled at the month's end.
Want to see the auction data yourself? Check it out on National Grid ESO website here