G-PST/ESIG Webinar: Market Products for System Stability

Featured Speaker: Edward Farley, Senior Market Development Lead, National Grid ESO
About the Webinar: Stability services are vital for the safe and secure operation of the electricity network. Traditionally our stability requirements (inertia and short circuit level) in Great Britain have been provided by synchronous generation as a natural by-product of creating electricity. As more non-synchronous assets connect to the network, which do not have this inherent capability, the ESO needs alternative sources of stability. Since 2019, the Stability Pathfinders have procured for long-term stability requirements, but there remains a reliance on the dispatch of synchronous generation in the Balancing Mechanism to ensure stability on short-term timescales. While current Balancing Mechanism arrangements ensure security, they do not provide long-term assurance and can often represent expensive actions. The development of a broader stability market offers a route to access stability services through an open, transparent, and competitive market specific to stability services. In 2021 ESO launched the Stability Market Design innovation project to explore the design for an enduring stability market with a focus on value for consumers. As a result of this work, in eSO's April 2023 Markets Roadmap, they set out their aim to procure stability services across three timescales, starting immediately with a mid-term (Y-1) stability market in 2023. The first mid-term (Y-1) market is currently in progress, aiming to competitively procure inertia services for delivery from 2025. This presentation will shed some light on this journey, the operability challenges ESO has faced, and how they are planning to combat them in the present and future through new market design.