• Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) Request For Expressions Of Interest

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  • Reserve Requirement

    AEMO is seeking expressions of interest for the provision of long notice reserve for summer 2017/18 in Victoria and South Australia (combined requirement), under the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) provisions.

    AEMO is also seeking expressions of interest from entities in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory who may be able to provide reserve energy on short and medium notice as part of a RERT panel.

    More detail is available in the expression of interest documents:

    What is RERT?

    The Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader is a function conferred on AEMO to maintain power system reliability and system security using reserve contracts.
    AEMO’s powers and obligations relating to RERT are set out in three areas:

    RERT Panel

    AEMO may procure long notice reserve through invitations to tender where it has 10 weeks or more notice of projected shortfall.

    Alternatively, AEMO may maintain a panel of RERT providers that can provide short notice (between three hours and seven days) and medium notice (between ten weeks and seven days) reserve if required and for whom technical details are pre-agreed.  Panel members  for short notice RERT agree on prices when appointed to the panel, whereas panel members for medium notice RERT do not, and prices are negotiated if and when reserve is required.

    The RERT panel allows AEMO to run an expedited tender process in short and medium notice situations, as the  tendering process is pre-agreed and makes use of pre-determined agreements and standard tender forms.

    What reserve is acceptable for RERT

    Typical examples of reserve that can be procured for RERT include:

    • Customer load that can be curtailed and restored on demand, this can be large industrial load or a group of aggregated smaller loads
    • Generation capacity that is not available to the market that can be brought online

    To be eligible, reserves provided under a reserve contract must not be available to the market through any other arrangements.

    In addition there are a number of criteria that AEMO will use to assess the reserve, these include:

    • What is the availability of the reserve over the summer period
    • Whether the reserve can be activated as a block of not less than 10MW
    • Whether the reserve can be activated continuously for at least 30 minutes

    Further detail on the reserve requirement is available in the expression of interest documents. AEMO is able to negotiate on many aspects of the RERT requirements and interested parties are encouraged to contact AEMO if they have any questions.

    What triggers RERT

    AEMO continuously assesses whether forecast reliability and security is outside a relevant NEM standard. If it observes this and it considers there is no market resolution to it, then AEMO may choose to procure reserve.
    The trigger for the activation of reserve depends upon the lead time required to activate the reserve and the nature of the reserve shortfall.

    Terms

    RERT contracts can have provisions to pay providers for availability, pre-activation (for non-scheduled reserves only), usage, and early termination. There are no payments made for being on the RERT panel.

    1 In particular, clause 3.20 of the NER.