January 28, 2025
In 2023 grids released the DER in Markets reports outlining the uptake and performance of the different operators and fleets of DER. No report was released in 2024 (fingers crossed one will get done in 2025 and we’ll call it a bi-annual report). I’ve received a few questions though about how DER, specifically in the FCAS markets, have done since.
With contingency FCAS prices falling I’d imagine there would be a slow down in DER participation, and I’d heard many anecdotes of DER (even up to 5MW BESS) skipping the contingency FCAS revenue stream. Taking a quick look at the data, I was wrong! There’s many new units signing up, over 50 by my count.
There are certainly some new participant, but a lot of this growth was driven by existing participants registering more units, sometimes even multiple units in the same region due to different technology types.
Overall contribution has increased too, with DER taking over 20% of FCAS raise share since mid 2024.
One driver of this is the over-representation of DER in 1 second FCAS relative to the other markets. Interestingly on the residential side, Simply Energy and Energy Locals were able to register 5MW and 11MW respectively, which is the same value as what’s registered for these units in the slower FCAS markets.
With the NEM review live there’s been a lot of chatter about where does DER fit in our future energy market. One thing DER participation in FCAS demonstrates is where there is sufficient value and low enough costs and complexity, DER will participate in markets, even ones as technically demanding as 1 second FCAS.
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