Capacity Markets guarantee reliability by paying producers to pledge generation for future years. Compensation for a capacity market may come from reserving energy storage capacity and from the energy discharged when the grid needs the energy most.
Select the Capacity Market checkbox on the Applications page to begin your setup.
Note: If you select the capacity market, you must include storage.
To delete an energy market, click on the red X 
in the upper right hand side.
Program Schedule
The program schedule determines when the battery should be held in reserve. Edit the program schedule by dragging across the season and time of day. During periods when the system is ‘participating,’ as shown in teal in the visualization, the battery will be held at 100% state of charge until a capacity market event is called, at which time the battery will discharge.
•Participate (teal) when you would like to reserve the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) for the capacity market.
•Don’t Participate (orange) when the BESS is not obliged to be reserved at 100% state of charge (SOC), such that it may respond to an event. Instead, the BESS may participate in other revenue opportunities such as Energy Market Sales.
Capacity Market Events
This schedule will determine when the BESS in the simulation should be discharged. You can define when capacity market events are called at random or scheduled times. During periods when the system is participating in the Capacity Market, the storage state of charge is held at 100% until a capacity market event is called. When the event is called, the battery must discharge completely. You may define these events to be called randomly, or you may enter specific dates on which the battery should discharge.
The event must fall within the program schedule. To maintain consistency around the day-of-the-week that an event is called, events defined with the ‘Specific Dates’ feature will shift year-over-year. If an event falls outside the program schedule due to year-over-year shifting, it will be ignored.
•Random events will assign events randomly during the reserved period
•Specific dates allow you enter a list of dates on which the BESS should be discharged in the simulation. You may consider looking at historical events to define when specific events may occur.
Variable |
Description |
Number of events per year |
The number of events per year |
Max events per month |
The maximum number of events assigned per month |
Max events per day |
The maximum number of events assigned per day |
Average event duration (hours) |
The average event duration |
Event duration variability |
The variability associated with each event |
Click Add Event to schedule additional capacity market dates.
Capacity Price
You may define a flat capacity price $/kW-mo or select the monthly icon to specify the rate for each month.
During periods that the system should participate in the Capacity Market, the battery is held at 100% state of charge. The system is compensated for holding this capacity in reserve through a $/kW-mo payment. The system is compensated only in those months when the program is set to ‘participate.’
You may choose to enable the Capacity price escalator feature to esclate flat or monthly capacity prices during the project lifetime.
Note: Enabling price escalators may increase calculation time
Energy Price
You may select an energy market previously defined under the Merchant Energy market price strips or specify a flat rate at which the BESS energy is compensated.
Select the Capacity Market and click on the drop-down to select an energy market defined previously in Energy Market.
You can choose to run an analysis on Energy Prices for flat rate or your defined energy market. When an event is called, the battery must discharge completely. The energy discharged is compensated at the price per MWh, which can either be a single $/MWh or at the energy market prices specified in the Energy Market section.
Note: Enabling the price esclator feature may increase calculation time
See Also
