What is the Stability Market Design project?

The Stability Market Design project will consider current GB stability arrangements and investigate the best option for an end-to-end stability market design. This could allow the ESO to start to develop a potential stability market and best optimise long term and short-term stability procurement.

Traditionally synchronous generation has provided stability requirements (inertia, Short Circuit Level & reactive power support) as a natural by-product. As more non-synchronous generation enters the system, the ESO needs alternative sources of stability.

Stability pathfinders allow us to test procurement approaches for long term stability requirements, but the ESO still rely on the dispatch of synchronous generation in the Balancing Mechanism to ensure stability. The development of a stability market could offer the ESO a route to access stability services through an open, transparent, and competitive market.

Project Data

Duration	September 2021 - March 2022
Funding	Network Innovation Allowance (NIA)
Partners	National Grid ESO, AFRY

More information on the stability market design project

Latest updates

The first phase of the Stability Market Design project has concluded in March 2022. The documents and material can be found below.

Published	Name
30 March 2022	ESO Thought Piece - Stability Market Design innovation project
30 March 2022	Report - Stability Market Design innovation project
30 March 2022	Annex 1 Scene setting and objectives - Stability Market Design innovation project
30 March 2022	Annex 2 Design options - Stability Market Design innovation project
30 March 2022	Annex 3 Modelling - Stability Market Design innovation project
30 March 2022	Annex 4 Preferred option - Stability Market Design innovation project

Stability Market Design webinar sessions

Watch the slide presentations by pressing the play icon on each image or download the slides from each session using the text link below each image.

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First webinar - download slides

Our first Stability Market Design innovation project webinar presents the situation, context, and rationale for change as well as discussing aspects of a potential stability market using building blocks approach.

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Second webinar - download slides

Our second and final Stability Market Design innovation project webinar shows how the ESO and AFRY used input from our previous survey into our overall assessment of options.

Project approach

This project will be a desk-based study run by ESO, AFRY and wider stakeholders.

The project will:

setting the scene to understand the future world and define the objectives to evaluate different market design options.
Using a “building blocks” approach, collate them into ‘straw man’ design options and develop detailed end-to-end designs.
Assess the different market design options against the assessment criteria
Recommend a potential high-level stability market design.

Stakeholders will be able to input in this project through various workshops and questionnaires. Engagement will take place at different stages of this project to gather feedback on the different options, the assessment, etc.

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