Provision of Local Reserve

Description

The risk of a local shortage of generation adequacy is caused by restrictions on the transmission network. The Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation (NIAUR) has written to SONI requesting it to explore arrangements, such as putting in place relevant System Support Services, to alleviate some or all of the risk identified. NIAUR has noted that any such arrangements should be time limited and that any additional costs of putting in place such measures should be reasonable and proportionate. NIAUR has also stated that the arrangements should be consistent with, or at least capable of interacting effectively with, the Single Electricity Market (SEM) arrangements. SONI is issuing this PQQ and conducting this procurement exercise in fulfillment of NIAUR’s request. SONI and EirGrid have recently published the Generation Capacity Statement for 2014-23. In this, SONI concludes that “if more than one prolonged generation outage happened at the same time, then Northern Ireland’s generation adequacy would drop below standard, and thus placing security of supply at increased risk. This particular risk could be managed by the addition of between 220 and 300 MW of extra plant”. It is anticipated that the ability to reduce demand by an equivalent amount would also resolve this issue. This procurement exercise aims to procure the services necessary to resolve this shortfall.