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IESA’s Services and Representations for Members
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1. Consultations and Responses

We follow the Consultations from CRU, SEMC, EirGrid etc relating to storage matters and ensure we submit representative and robust responses to these. The process is:

  1. we alert Members when these are issued,

  2. then Frank Burke our Technical Advisor prepares a draft response in conjunction with the other people on the IESA team, and this is then circulated to IESA Members,

  3. we run a short information webinar (if requested) so that Members understand the issues and can come back with considered comments/views/ specific points for inclusion in the submission,

  4. we finally submit the response to the appropriate body. The objective is to ensure our Members are abreast of developments relating to the storage sector and that their considered and expert views are in the Consultation to be taken account of.

We have to note here that Frank Burke is a person of exceptional experience and knowledge in this sector and is regarded as one of the most competent in this area in Ireland (and beyond) in system services.

2. Storage Issues requiring attention

We consider issues that are posing difficulties for the storage sector (sometimes raised by members), develop a position and then address it in a structured way. The most notable example of this was the "wires' double-charging" anomaly which still exists for storage projects, in contrast to demand sites, generation sites and auto-generation sites who all pay only on either imports or exports. Storage projects were being seriously damaged economically by this anomaly. IESA argued with and convinced the CRU to issue a Consultation earlier this summer proposing an interim solution pending an enduring solution later.

A Decision was published on 29 Sept 2020 on this matter as an interim solution of wires' charges (TUoS payment for Commercial Storage facilities will be on imports only); the new TUoS charging regime will be implemented on 1st Oct 2020. This has been a notable success for IESA. The savings will be approx €6k per MW per annum on a storage project, so on a 50 MW project for example this would be €300k per annum - a significant sum. This is a major success for the IESA.

The link to this Decision Paper on Network Charging for Commercial Storage Units is:

https://www.cru.ie/document_group/network-charging-for-commercial-storage-units/

3. Newsletter

We keep up to date with developments in the storage sector both in Ireland and globally as it is important to know about new applications for storage, changes in technology and the types of projects being implemented as well as market developments. News items are posted on the “News” section on our website, and on the IESA LinkedIn page.

In addition, we issue a Newsletter periodically setting out the issues arising in the storage sector and the current activities/actions underway in IESA, and other relevant news items. By maintaining contact with our Affiliates/partners in Australia, China, India and USA we stay abreast of storage developments globally.

4. In-house webinars twice per year for members

We plan to hold in-house webinars twice per year where necessary for our members. We do not hold these for the sake of doing so or un-necessarily impacting on IESA Members' time. Many of the storage sector issues arising are addressed in the mini-webinars relating to individual Consultation papers. 

5. Annual Conference or Webinar

In the absence of Conferences during the current pandemic we plan to hold larger open webinars from time to time, as important topics arise. Our Green Hydrogen Storage Webinar held on 15th Sept was an outstanding success with almost 180 participants from across 14 countries.

Our view is that these will be free for Members but down the road we will charge non-members for attendance.

6. Training session on storage market for all members

This final service described here is that when a new Member joins IESA we provide a training session on all the terms relating to the energy storage market, including the related processes, technologies and applications impacting on the electricity sector (a new Member would input to this list prior to the training session). For example, many people are familiar with the terms synchronous condensers, rapid-response storage, behind-the-meter storage, synthetic inertia, the various new system services (to mention but a few) but are not sure how precisely they serve or impact the TSO/customers/revenue stream. This particular service is seen by new members as having high added-value.

 

Our Technical Advisor, Frank Burke, delivered a Training Session for all members on 20th Oct on (i) Energy Storage Technologies & Applications and (ii) the DS3 market. The feedback was very positive. Further Sessions will be run in the future.

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