BOSTON and MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 28, 2017 — EnerNOC, Inc., an Enel Group Company, has begun providing Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) with Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS), which help to support power system security and ensure uninterrupted power for all consumers during unexpected events that affect the flow of energy.
EnerNOC’s aggregated demand response resource is currently providing up to 70 MW of FCAS to support system security, marking the first time that distributed demand-side resources have provided grid balancing ancillary services in Australia’s National Electricity Market.
“We are thrilled to be a part of the NEM’s ongoing transition to a system based on distributed energy resources in Australia,” said Jeff Renaud, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific at EnerNOC.
“Historically, grid balancing ancillary services have been provided by conventional generators, but demand response is a large “ready to use” resource that can supply these services faster, cheaper, and with fewer emissions than traditional generators can. Some options offered by EnerNOC can restore the balance between supply and demand on the grid in less than 100 milliseconds. As large, centralised thermal plants are progressively being displaced by renewables and distributed energy, there is a greater need for solutions like EnerNOC’s, addressing issues impacting the regular energy flows on the grid very quickly.”
‘Contingency FCAS’ can help the power system remain stable and rebalance the grid when the regular flow of energy on the grid is disturbed. EnerNOC’s distributed network of devices instantaneously detects imbalances on the grid and then safely and automatically decreases customer loads, typically in less than one second. Demand-side customers participating in EnerNOC’s service include facilities from multiple industries, such as cold storage, manufacturing, and forest products.