National Grid ESO  opened a tender to provide stability services to the system for periods up to five years. The tender period was oroginally due to end on 29 November but it has been extended to 17 January. New contract terms will be published on 25 November on NGESO’s website here

It has invited bids from both transmission and distribution system owners and commercial service providers, although these bids will be considered in parallel. Providers must be Balancing Market units and NGESO says that because it needs ”high confidence in service delivery” it will only consider limited technologies in this ‘phase one’ tender: synchronous compensators and synchronous generators running in a synchronous compensator mode, which could be provided from existing plant, conversion or new build from either existing or new BM participants. It promised to consider a broader range of technologies in a phase two tender next year.

Constraint management is required where the electricity transmission system is unable to transmit power to the location of demand, due to congestion at one or more parts of the transmission network. The need for these services varies across the network and payments will reflect both location – NGESO has provided list of substations setting out where the need is high, medium and low – and the ability of providers to offer high inertia at relatively low levels of generation.

Contract awards will be made on 13 December for contract periods starting within the year from 1 April 2020 and end within the three years from 31 March 2023.

Read the full tender information