Experience with bidding ancillary services in ERCOT: A modeler´s perspective

ERCOT offers its market participants the simultaneous opportunity to increase the value of their assets and reduce operating costs to meet customer load and ancillary obligations. ERCOT has enabled its participants to do this through the facilitation of a day-ahead market for ancillary services in combination with a zonal real-time energy market. The market for ancillary services is comprised of four standard products that can be hedged and are actively traded. These products include responsive reserve service (RRS), non spinning reserve service (NSRS), up regulation service (URS) and down regulation service (DRS). With the addition of substantial amounts of new wind generating capacity in Texas, the need for ancillary services have increased.