Balancing services
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Enhancing Energy Storage in the Balancing Mechanism
Balancing services
23 Oct 2023 - 2
minute read
On 16 October, we welcomed over 75 stakeholders from across the energy industry to our ‘Enhancing Energy Storage in the Balancing Mechanism’ event where we outlined our plan to enhance the use of storage assets in our balancing activities and the timelines to achieve this.
What’s next for the Balancing Mechanism?
- On 12 December, we’re launching the Open Balancing Platform (OBP) which uses the Bulk Dispatch Optimiser (BDO).
- The BDO automated the aggregation of multiple storage assets to facilitate their use in the Balancing Mechanism.
- In Spring 2024, Fast Dispatch launches to allow for quicker bulk dispatch, specifically targeting assets that are used for fast frequency correction.
- In Summer 2024, we’re introducing ‘Quick Reserve’ – a new product aimed primarily for reacting to pre-fault disturbances to restore the energy imbalance quickly and return frequency close to 50.0Hz.
View a full timeline of our balancing activities
Our continued collaboration with industry stakeholders
A key focus of the event was to explore, in strong collaboration with industry, how to co-create and develop the capabilities and future market design solutions that will enable efficient dispatch of all assets in the Balancing Mechanism, in line with our net-zero ambitions and to manage balancing costs.
We also discussed the need for enhanced dispatch transparency and to achieve a ‘common language’ with industry in this regard. To support the creation of this, we’ve commissioned LCP Delta, an independent expert, to help us build an enhanced dispatch transparency dataset that will provide a deeper understanding of operational actions in the control room and drive improvement opportunities.
Claire Dykta, Head of Markets ESO said:
"Collaboration with industry is key to ensure we transform the current system capabilities and provide fair routes to market, and so that we can understand each other’s challenges that we face every day. Our stakeholders really valued the ESO sharing a combined view of what was being delivered and an opportunity to shape the way forward."
How to keep informed
The feedback we received from stakeholders will be used to continue developing our plans. Look out for our follow-up event in December where you can hear the outputs and next steps from LCP Delta’s analysis.
