Our commitment to improve battery dispatch rates in the Balancing Mechanism

Last Thursday morning (10 October) NESO convened a roundtable with leaders from the energy sector representing battery owners, developers, and investors. This was a key step in our response to the open letter we received on 12 September from the Battery Storage Coalition.   

The letter raised concerns about how we dispatch batteries, and the adequacy of our response to date. On both points we recognise that we could have acted quicker, and our actions have not gone far enough. We welcome the very constructive way in which the battery storage coalition set out their points and their offer to work collaboratively with us to solve problems.   

NESO hugely values the role batteries play today, helping to secure and balance the system in real time. There is a growing role for batteries in the future, with our forecasts seeing a need for four or five times the capacity we have today by 2030.   

At the roundtable we set out four short term actions we are taking to demonstrate our commitment to transparency and collaboration and critically to make a meaningful impact on skip rates. These are: 

1. We will release an updated dispatch algorithm in the control room 
2. From the start of November, we will have critical new resource start in control room 
3. By the end of November, we will deploy new transparency tools  
4. By mid-November, we will publish the LCP Delta definition, methodology and full report   

These four actions will increase our ability to track, measure, report on and bring down skip rates. We have committed to reconvening the group in December to review progress.   

In addition to our plan, we heard the views of those in the room. This welcome feedback has given us additional areas to reflect on and explore. We particularly welcome the commitment from industry representatives to work with us to solve problems we all collectively face.  

In response to industry feedback, we also committed to doing further work on a number of code modifications, to review and clarify the ’30 minute rule’ and to review balancing reserve and wider reserve procurement strategies.  

We know that these actions alone will not solve skip rates, but we believe they will make a meaningful impact and demonstrate our commitment to move at pace in implementing new solutions.   

NESO is committed to a level-playing field for all technologies within our markets and transparency in our discussions. We will be holding a further meeting with battery owners, developers and investors in two months to review progress on these issues.