GridBeyond’s new Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) is now available in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The launch continues GridBeyond’s innovation journey in the delivery of a market leading price forecasts for energy trading and flexibility management. The forecasts are based on the company’s proprietary machine learning technology that is applied to forecast, optimise, and control its global fleet of flexible energy assets.
This enhanced capability allows GridBeyond to dynamically optimise the bidding strategy in real-time for customers with large, flexible loads, leading to a significant increase in revenues.
GridBeyond continues to push the boundaries of innovation in price forecasting for energy and the eight ancillary services comprising the FCAS NEM markets. Operating in the eastern and south-eastern states of Australia, the FCAS forecasts cover all five regions –Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania as well as the full suite of FCAS products for both contingency and regulation.
FCAS refers to a set of mechanisms and services implemented within the power systems to regulate and stabilise grid frequency by providing a fast injection or fast reduction of energy, to manage the supply and demand balance.
GridBeyond said having an early and accurate view of what both FCAS and energy spot prices are likely to be in the highly volatile and increasingly weather-driven NEM is critical to helping energy asset owners maximise the opportunity that flexible assets hold. This will become increasingly important as competition for FCAS services increase as markets saturate. The company said simple ‘price taker’ trading strategies no longer work and the ability to pivot quickly with shifting market dynamics becomes paramount.
GridBeyond’s FCAS services combine sophisticated hardware control with backend software algorithms and the solution automates the real-time bidding process for dynamic loads in the FCAS market. The new forecasts provide a five-minute view of prices over the next 48 hours and are refreshed every half hour until market closure (i.e., five minutes before dispatch).
GridBeyond Head of Trading, Paul Conlon, said the forecasts form the basis of the company’s digital trading and optimisation platform, enabling customers to monetise flexibility through demand response, battery energy storage systems, co-located renewables or a combination of all three.
“The innovation demonstrates GridBeyond’s unique ability to apply technological sophistication and expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to address challenging technical problems in the transition to net zero while delivering increased revenue to GridBeyond’s customers in any market.”
