GridBeyond launches price forecasting service in Australia

PRESS RELEASE

Sydney, 15 January 2025. Today GridBeyond announced its launch of its new FCAS (Frequency Control Ancillary Services) price forecasting service in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). This launch continues its innovation journey in the delivery of market leading price forecasts for energy trading and flexibility management. These forecasts are based on GridBeyond proprietary machine learning technology that is applied to forecast, optimise, and control its global fleet of flexible energy assets. This enhanced capability allows GridBeyond to dynamically optimise the bidding strategy in real time for customers with large, flexible loads, leading to a significant increase in revenues.

GridBeyond continues to push the boundaries of innovation in price forecasting for energy and the eight ancillary services comprising the FCAS NEM markets. Operating in the eastern and southeastern states of Australia, the FCAS forecasts cover all 5 regions namely: Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania as well as the full suite of FCAS products for both contingency and regulation. FCAS refers to a set of mechanisms and services implemented within the power systems to regulate and stabilise grid frequency by providing a fast injection or fast reduction of energy, to manage the supply and demand balance. 

Having an early and accurate view of what both FCAS and energy spot prices are likely to be in the highly volatile and increasingly weather-driven NEM is critical to helping energy asset owners maximise the opportunity that flexible assets hold. This will become increasingly important as competition for FCAS services increase as markets saturate. Simple “price taker” trading strategies no longer work and the ability to pivot quickly with shifting market dynamics becomes paramount.  

GridBeyond’s FCAS services combine sophisticated hardware control with backend software algorithms, this solution automates the real-time bidding process for dynamic loads in the FCAS market. The new forecasts provide a 5 minute view of prices over the next 48 hours and are refreshed every half hour until market closure (i.e. 5 minutes before dispatch). 

“These forecasts form the basis of our digital trading and optimisation platform enabling our customers to monetise flexibility through demand response, battery energy storage systems, co-located renewables or a combination of all three. The innovation demonstrates GridBeyond unique ability to apply technological sophistication and expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to address challenging technical problems in the transition to net zero while delivering  increased revenue to GridBeyond’s customers in any market” said Paul Conlon, Head of Trading at GridBeyond.