Future of response services

Having launched our new Dynamic Response Services, Dynamic Containment (DC), Dynamic Moderation (DM) and Dynamic Regulation (DR), we are aiming to lift the volume caps on DM and DR to allow our requirement for the legacy dynamic Firm Frequency Response (FFR) to be offset. 

We aim to cease procurement of dynamic FFR by the end of FY23/24. Future plans include finding an enduring solution to meet our continuing requirement for static response.    

Outlook

 We are continuing to develop our response services based on industry feedback as well as our requirements for the services and long-term commitments and ambitions.  

In the short and medium term, we aim to cease procurement of dynamic FFR and develop a future service to recover frequency to +/- 0.5Hz within 60 seconds following large scale losses. We have been working through options to meet this need and a new service provisionally called Static Response has been identified.  

In the longer term we aim to manage a number of challenges highlighted in our Future Energy Scenarios (FES) 2022 report and Operability Strategy Report (OSR) 2023. More variable sources of generation, increasing volumes of demand flexibility and price driven coordinated behaviour of assets, such as EV’s and interconnectors, create more challenging balancing conditions for NESO.    

Consultation engagement

We are introducing an annual service development cycle for response, which if effective, will be implemented across ancillary service development.  

The ambition of the annual cycle is to provide all stakeholders with a repeatable, reliable plan which takes in to account fixed timelines for the formal Energy Balancing Regulation (EBR) consultation, and to provide sufficient timelines for engagement, onboarding and systems development. 

Thorough engagement activities will be held ahead of the consultation, ensuring all voices are heard, and importantly, the majority of changes are developed by NESO and communicated to industry for feedback, ahead of the consultation launch. This mitigates the challenge of making significant changes in the review period, post-consultation.   

Webinars and workshops

Future frequency response products

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Technical workshops

Following the webinar and survey, we ran three workshops with selected members of the industry throughout May.  These workshops allowed us to discuss our proposals in more detail, explore the reasons behind some of the design decisions we have made, and understand providers' views firsthand. 

View presentation to industry workshops

Webinar on initial design concept

We held a webinar to outline our initial design concepts for the planned faster-acting frequency response products on 14 March 2018. The webinar was focused on the technical development rather than commercial framework and procurement methodologies, which will be developed at a later stage.

You can download the slides and presenter notes for the webinar on initial design concepts. 

Following the webinar, we asked industry parties to provide feedback on the initial design concepts through a questionnaire, followed by a number of small technical workshops with industry volunteers. All the information gathered is now being used in the next stage of development.

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