Gore Street Energy Storage Fund taps GridBeyond for Big Rock optimisation
Image courtesy 123rf
Dublin-based energy tech company GridBeyond has won a contract with Gore Street Energy Storage Fund to provide Scheduling Coordinator, trading, and energy optimisation services for the 200MW Big Rock battery system in Southern California.
With the contract, GridBeyond’s AI product Bid Optimizer will be used to align market price forecasts with simulations of battery storage, renewable, and thermal assets to inform bids and trading strategies.
According to the company, their optimisation platform accurately forecasts forward power prices, running simulations to align site demand with managed generation and battery storage assets. Digital twin models are used to simulate asset performance under different trading strategies and market outcomes.
Big Rock, energised in January, is Gore Street Energy Storage Fund’s largest asset to date, with a capacity of 200MW/400MWh.
The project in 2024 secured a 12-year fixed-price Resource Adequacy (RA) contract with Goldman Sachs subsidiary J. Aron & Company LLC, with a value of over $165 million over the contract life. RA revenue will commence in June 2025, but the asset is expected to start generating merchant revenue in advance of June. The contract is fully stackable, allowing for concurrent revenue streams across wholesale trading and ancillary services.
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The RA programme, for which GridBeyond says their platform and strategy will be a key component in fulfilling, aims to ensure sufficient generation resources are available to meet the energy system’s supply requirements.
The RA programme requires load-serving entities to demonstrate they have secured enough generation capacity through RA contracts to cover their forecasted peak demand plus a reserve margin.
This includes physical resources like energy storage to ensure flexibility and reliability in the power supply.
Commenting in a release was Alex O’Cinneide, CEO of Gore Street Capital: “Gore Street is committed to achieving the very best returns for all of its assets under management. We are therefore very pleased to have selected GridBeyond to partner with as Big Rock goes into operation and we move forward with the project.”
Said Sean McEvoy, GridBeyond president of North America: “We are thrilled to partner with Gore Street Capital on this energy storage project.
“This deal highlights our commitment to advancing energy storage optimisation solutions and shows once again the accuracy of our AI based solutions in delivering greater value for our customers ensuring grid stability, and supporting decarbonisation goals.”
GridBeyond’s contract win comes less than a month after the entry of their Process Optimiser tech in the US, focusing on industrial sites to boost their profitability by optimising production schedules against variable energy prices.
GridBeyond says they are also exploring the use of public hourly emissions API data to track and calculate the carbon impact of its bidding strategies.
