Articles by Harley MacKenzie

Short term forecasting of wind power plant generation for the provision of ancillary services

As NEM wind power plants progressively work towards implementing FCAS, the criticality of ensuring that the power system either a) takes account of the variability in the wind forecasts coming from the wind power plants in the coming 5-7 minutes and follows the wind direction, or b) sets an appropriate dispatch level to ensure wind variability is minimized, becomes even more important for market and power system operators.


NEM FCAS causer pays factor issues for wind and solar farms

Generators used to consider the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) FCAS causers pays factors (CPF), used to allocate FCAS regulation costs across the market, as an obscure and unimportant technically challenging curiosity. Since 2014, the cost of FCAS regulation services for generators has increased from just under $5 million per year to greater than $60 million for 2016 and now has the attention of all of the generators, especially if their portfolio includes generation assets in regions with a lack of FCAS regulation providers and high prices such as South Australia.