DC procurement changes

Changes are being made to DC procurement and are scheduled to go live by the end of August. These changes include:

EFA block procurement - Instead of a single 24-hour contract, contracts will span 4-hour blocks. Price caps and procurement targets will vary by EFA block.

Pay-as-clear pricing - Currently participants receive their bid price when securing a contract. Going forward, successful participants will all receive the maximum accepted bid price, known as the clearing price.

New bidding structure - Participants will be able to fine-tune their bids in DC with single period bids, multiperiod bids and curtailable bids.

To prepare the industry for these changes, National Grid Electricity System Operator (NG ESO) ran a mock auction on 21 July 2021. On Wednesday 17 August 11:00-12:00 (BST), the ESO will be hosting a webinar to review the auction and provide updated details on the above changes (click here for the calendar invite and joining info).

At a glance

Contracted volumes continue to increase for the ninth consecutive month, with the average accepted volume growing 132 MW (+19%) from June.

DC prices remain the highest across all frequency response markets (£17/MW/h), driven by an undersupplied market. Currently, there is room for a further ~450 MW in DC.

Forward-looking procurement targets are currently under review as part of the changes coming to the DC market.

Daily price and volumes

Accepted volume surpassed 900 MW for the first time on 30 July, following the entrance of Harmony Energy and FRV’s joint venture site, Contego.

Market share

New entrants

June saw the entrance of several new sites into the Dynamic Containment market, including:

Contego, 34 MW/68 MWh - The second BESS from the Harmony Energy-FRV joint venture, which uses Tesla as both OEM and optimisation partner.

Ancala 11.2 MW - The Ancala project is made up of 10 sites across the UK and marks Anesco’s first market entrance since pivoting to optimisation services.

Leaderboard

With consistent pricing of £17/MW/h across all participants in DC, Modo Leaderboard positions are driven largely by availability and uptime. The highest performing sites all held 24/7 contracts at 100% capacity.