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Power Engineering

What are the best practices for

reducing power losses and improving
voltage stability in transmission lines?

How do you name a distributed Energy Management

power station?
How can you respond to power system
disturbances?

Matt Grover Power Engineering

Solutions Engineering at Fluence + Follow
What are the best tools to improve
Published Aug 9, 2018
power quality?

After nearly six years working on demand side resource integration in the National Energy Management

Electricity Market, today is my last day at EnerNOC. Before I go, I want to share one What are the best practices for
nerdy story with my friends and colleagues in the industry – the story of the time I designing a power distribution network
to accommodate future growth?
got to name a power station.

One of the contributions I'm most proud of is the work my colleagues at EnerNOC Show more

and I have done over the past two years to begin participating in the NEM's
Contingency FCAS markets – where we designed, commissioned, registered, and
began trading the NEM's first distributed & aggregated demand response resources
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that provide grid-balancing Frequency Control Ancillary Services. (Which I've written Power Trends November
in more detail about here). 2024: Exploring the 2024
Reliability Needs
Assessment
Even though EnerNOC's individual demand response customers are distributed
NYISO · 1mo
throughout the NEM, our aggregated resources are fully integrated into AEMO's
market systems, meaning they submit bids and receive dispatch instructions the To Increase Reliability, Texas
same way generators do, and compete against (mostly) generators for the right to Needs a Genius Grid
Doug Lewin · 3y
supply critical grid-balancing ancillary services. In the eyes of AEMO's market
systems, EnerNOC's resources are the NEM's first 'dispatchable units' that are not Electric Grid Codes and
located in a single place – a 'distributed power station', or 'virtual power plant' (VPP), Integration of Distributed
Energy Resources (DERs)
in a way. Shaibu Ibrahim, EIT, PMP® · 3y

My favorite part of our FCAS journey was when it came time to choose a name for Texas power grid holds up
our new distributed 'power stations'. When registering with AEMO, every power quite well through record
spring heatwave
station in the NEM must choose a 'Dispatchable Unit Identifier' ('DUID', for short) for
Kent Knutson · 2y
each of its individual generating units, which becomes the unit's name in all of
AEMO's market systems and in the public MMS database. Once AEMO sets up the Power Moves | November
2024
DUID in the database, it can't be changed, and it will remain there forever - even
Electric Power Supply
after the power station retires. Association · 2mo

All of the NEM's power stations have names. Most are named after the place the Hazardous Electrical Grid
station is located (Gladstone, Laverton, Newport). At least a couple eminent Failures Are becoming
Worse
Australians have had stations named after them (Playford, John Butters) – though
Stephen E. Williams · 2y
the same honour has been bestowed on at least as many creeks (Dry Creek, McKay
Creek, Kogan Creek). Show more

Most DUIDs are simple shortenings of the power station's name. Hazelwood's DUID
was HWPS1, the Bald Hills Wind farm is BALDHWF1, Gladstone Power Station is Explore topics
GSTONE1, and so on. There are 622 DUIDs in AEMO's database - seasoned industry
Sales
folks will have memorised the majority of them.
Marketing
But how do you name a power station that doesn't exist in a single place?
IT Services
My colleagues and I had the unique privilege of trying to solve that problem for the
Business Administration
first time back in July of 2017 – I figured it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to
leave my own personal mark on the NEM – however esoteric. We knew we needed HR Management
to register four dispatchable units, one in each of the four mainland NEM regions
Engineering
(Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and South Australia), and consequently we
decided we wanted to name our units starting with V, N, Q, and S, so that we could Soft Skills

easily and obviously tell them apart. At the time, AEMO's only formal instructions
See All
were that a DUID must be less than 10 characters, end in "1", and not contain the
name of the company registering/operating the unit.

So my colleague Alex Leemon and I sat down to brainstorm a set of names. I even
texted a few friends for help ("do you want to help name a new power station?").
After much thought and deliberation we sent AEMO our proposed names:
VANHOUTEN1, NELSON1, QUIMBY1, and SMITHERS1.

I loved The Simpsons as a kid, and I liked the symbolic irony of naming the NEM's
first distributed power stations after characters from Springfield, with its famous
nuclear power station – the ultimate example of centralised power. We surmised that
our proposal was a bit cheeky but also harmless, and after all - AEMO could always
say no. So we sent in our application and waited for AEMO's response.

…and sure enough, they said no. We didn't get an explanation for the rejection, but I
suppose we didn't need one. Fair enough – I hope the registration folks at AEMO had
a good chuckle, at least.

We sent in our backup proposal: VENUS1, NEPTUNE1, QUASAR1, and SATURN1,

hoping a set of planets would be deemed more palatable. The planets got the green
light, and VENUS1 became the first of EnerNOC's new dispatchable units to be
immortalised in AEMO's database. The NEM's first power station named after a
planet!

Shortly after VENUS1 went live in the market systems, I suspect AEMO realised that
their future will involve registering many more such distributed dispatchable units,
because they decided to implement a standardised naming convention. This is
much less fun than letting market participants immortalise Simpsons characters and
planets, but I suppose it is far more sensible.

AEMO came up with a formula that determined the name of EnerNOC's second
DUID: ASNENC1. 'AS' to denote the unit is for ancillary services, 'N' to denote the
NSW1 NEM region, and 'ENC' to denote EnerNOC. Our third DUID in Queensland
became ASQENC1, and we'll be applying soon to register our fourth DUID in South
Australia, which presumably - if we follow the naming convention – will be called
ASSENC1 - a name that would make Bart Simpson proud. AEMO's recent market
interventions in South Australia have been the subject of much discussion – I
suspect this is another instance in which AEMO will have to intervene!

I should say that the folks at AEMO were generally very helpful through the whole
process. EnerNOC arrived in their lap at a tricky time, when the registration desk was
snowed under with a historic number of applications from new wind and solar farms
looking to register – and we were utilising a brand new market rule and a hot-off-
the-press registration process. I am particularly grateful to Chris Muffett at AEMO
for helping us navigate the new registration process and to James Lindley for
helping us understand the technical requirements.

I share this story not just for a laugh, but because it is a harbinger of things to come.
The future NEM will have many more distributed 'dispatchable units' like EnerNOC's,
and these resources will be participating in the wholesale energy market, in addition
to the FCAS markets. Inevitably, they will be participating in markets for services we
haven't even thought of yet.

Households with rooftop solar panels and battery storage will be networked
together and aggregated to form true 'virtual power plants' (VPPs) that generate
and store zero-carbon solar energy during the day, and dispatch that stored solar
energy into the market during the evening and morning peaks. Similarly, traditional
demand response will flourish - larger energy users with flexible loads will shift their
consumption away from periods of peak grid demand (expensive spot prices) and
into periods with high renewable energy generation (cheap spot prices). Australia
will almost definitely lead the world in the development and integration of these
types of low-carbon distributed energy resources.

I say that with confidence not only because Australia has experienced world-leading
uptake of rooftop solar - but also because the AEMC has just unveiled the new
market framework that is going to enable this distributed future. The AEMC's newly
released Reliability Frameworks Review final report details plans for new market
mechanisms that will formalise the way behind-the-meter resources are aggregated
together into VPPs and equipped to truly participate in the wholesale energy market
- competing against traditional generators for the right to supply the market. By
formally integrating VPPs into the market, AEMO will gain much-needed visibility
that will help it keep supply and demand in perfect balance at all times during the
NEM's unstoppable transition from a carbon-intensive centralised market, to a low-
carbon distributed one.

So while I didn't get a chance to immortalise Millhouse Van Houten in AEMO's

database, I'm pretty happy with my single planet – and to have played a role in
registering the NEM's first fully integrated distributed energy resource. VENUS1 was
the first – but it won't be the last.

Like Comment Share 112 · 17 Comments

Shasa Foster 4mo

Valuations and hedge accounting specialist

Hi Matt Grover, is there a public view / API of the 622+ DUIDs in AEMOs database.

Currently I've only found the dispatch view (at

https://www.nemweb.com.au/REPORTS/ARCHIVE/Dispatch_SCADA/) or the MLF reports.

Like · Reply

Kim Lawrence 6y
Board & Committee Member | Chair | Advisor & Consultant | 20 yrs leader in Renewable Energy, Industrial Decarboniz…

Great read Matt. Bringing a sentimental tone into discussion on network registration and operation is
quite impressive.

Like · Reply

Mary Wang 6y
Enjoy Sunshine, Enjoy Life.-----Solar Panels makes life better.

Good

Like · Reply

Howard Foy 6y
Optima Energy solutions for Industry and Agriculture

nice !

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