The ‘top up’ T-1 Capacity Market auction for next winter closed at £45.
Consumers will pay to underwrite one 435MW coal-fired station – Uniper’s Ratcliffe 4 – and 6.12MW of diesel generation. But the largest contribution to the capacity contracted was embedded gas engines. Some 93 gas engine sites totalling 986MW won contracts. There was also a contract for EirGrid’s 295MW East-West interconnector.
Solar (12.7MW) and wind (13.5MW) won contracts suggesting that the CM is seen as a viable option to underwrite new plant. The solar owners are Warrington Power and the onshore wind power contracts, for new-build, were with ScottishPower, Greencoat Wind and Muirhall’s Crossdykes project.
Contracts went to 239MW of demand side response and 114MW of battery storage. Among these Gridserv, Pivot Power, Power Act and Thrive renewables were among those who won contracts for new-build batteries. Tata Steel won two DSR contracts.
The auction results illustrated how far the UK pool of generators has moved on from the small pool of large generators who represented the market in past decades.
Around 53% of the 4240MW that entered the auction won a contract, representing 156 units belonging to 48 parent companies. The relatively small amount of capacity available in the year-ahead auction brought forward distributed generation specialists and among those winning contracts were Aggregated Micro Power (Urban Reserve), Amber Energy Storage, Anesco, Bagnall Energy, Conrad Energy Holdings, Eclipse, Kiwi Power, GridBeyond, Harmony, Flexitricity, Limejump (part of Shell) and Zenobe,