What’s happened to those Semi-Scheduled units registered to provide FCAS?

There are various dimensions of the the FCAS question, including the following … and we’re increasingly interested in all of them – including:

Dimension #1 = there’s the frequency management services that are competitively tendered/rewarded (i.e. FCAS)  … and there are those services that is just a mandatory ‘ticket to the game’ (i.e. PFR).

Dimension #2 = in the FCAS bundle, there are the Regulation FCAS services, and there are the Contingency FCAS

Dimension #3 = there’s those units that provide each of these services:

(a)  and the strategies adopted for each (or all)

(b)  and revenues achieved (such as how Dan noted here reducing size of relative revenue share for batteries)

Dimension #4 = there are the different approaches used for apportionment and recovery of FCAS costs:

(a)  With Regulation costs, different from

(b)  Contingency Raise costs, different from

(c)  Contingency Lower costs.

Dimension #5 = there is the looming change from Causer Pays to Frequency Performance Payments method.

Dimension #6 = and there’s the role of self-forecasting:

(a)  As a way for some Semi-Scheduled units to provide an accurate estimate of UIGF

(b)  Or for others, there’s been a use of self-forecasting explicitly to achieve a zero MPF via Causer Pays … and some see this as a segue into games that self-forecasters can play.

So it was of interest when, in a conversation this morning, we were asked a question to the effect of ‘What’s happened to those Semi-Scheduled units registered to provide FCAS?’.  Given the recent release of the GSD2024, I started flipping pages and thought it’s worth sharing the following with you as a starting point for discussions …

(A)  Who’s (at least) registered to provide FCAS?

Narrowing our focus to just Semi-Scheduled units in this article, we take a quick look at those units who are currently registered to provide FCAS as follows:

(B)  A quick look at the participation of some of these units

In the GSD2024 there’s a focused page for each unit registered to (and offering) any FCAS commodity across the past 10 years (as described in this page here).  So, taking a quick sample of some of the units above, here’s a collation of some quick observations – intended moreso to prompt questions that we might follow on with later:

B1)  Hornsdale Wind Farm 2

From mid 2017 to mid 2018, ARENA provided assistance in the completion of a Hornsdale Wind Farm Stage 2 FCAS Trial.  So I was interested to extract the focused page for the (FCAS participation for the) HDWF2 unit as follows:

There’s much that can be gleaned from this report, but two observations jump right out:

1)  Participation in both Regulation FCAS and (selected) Contingency FCAS commodities; and also

2)  Declining participation since ~2021, to the point where 2024 was quite lean altogether.

B2)  Kiamal Solar Farm

As far as I am aware, the Kiamal Solar Farm completed the journey for registration to provide Contingency FCAS without ARENA support (if that’s incorrect let me know and I can update).

Even though it did not require ARENA support, the FCAS Participation Page in the GSD2024 shows a solid participation

B3)  Musselroe Wind Farm

From 2018 to 2022 ARENA provided assistance in completion of the Musselroe Wind Farm FCAS Trial.  We also wrote about this trial in September 2021 in the article ‘Enabling FCAS at Musselroe Wind Farm – Information Session this Wednesday 29th Sept (15:00-16:30)’.

1)  We can see the services for which it is registered to offer above

2)  Yet the unit did not submit any bids for FCAS through 2024 … hence (via the logic we use in each annual update for the Generator Statistical Digest, no page for Musselroe in this Edition.

B4)  Other Semi-Scheduled DUIDs and FCAS participation

There are other DUIDs listed in the ‘registered to provide FCAS’ table above that are not explored here … you can do this with your own copy of the GSD2024

… download the Order Form here.

But there’s also the possibility that there might be Semi-Scheduled units part-way through the registration process, or considering their involvement (potentially in conjunction with changes to cost recovery mechanisms for Regulation FCAS under Frequency Performance Payments).  They are also not discussed here.