This report summarises Flow Power’s ARENA demand response trial program participation and experiences.
Report extract
This report summarises Flow Power’s ARENA demand response trial program participation and experiences.
The ARENA demand response trial ran from 1 December 2017 until 30 November 2020. Over the course of the trial Flow Power built a portfolio of commercial and industrial (C & I) customers in New South Wales; these customers were enrolled in the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) mechanism, an out-of-market emergency reserves mechanism in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The start of the ARENA DR trial coincided with changes to the RERT mechanism which allowed distributed and aggregated demand response loads to participate for the first time. The ARENA trial was thus exploring entirely new territory for demand response in the NEM.
In addition to the ARENA DR trial portfolio in NSW Flow Power also tendered RERT portfolios in most states for each summer during the trial period (2017-18, 2018-19 & 2019-20), providing invaluable learning experiences for how commercial and industrial customers engage with demand response and specifically the RERT mechanism. Flow Power has also advised spot price-response customers of wholesale volatility dating back to 2009 and earlier.