The latest year-ahead Capacity Market auction has cleared at £45/kW – the highest price seen so far in one of the regular auctions.
The T-1 auction for delivery over the 2020/21 winter season procured 2,252MW of de-rated capacity across 156 units. The procurement target for the auction was recently raised more than six-fold to 2.4GW, primarily due to a significant reduction in the expected availability of generation over the winter season owing to outages, delays, cancellations, or decommissioning.
According to the provisional results published by the delivery body, National Grid Electricity System Operator, existing generation accounted for 1,427MW of successful capacity and included 212MW of combined heat and power, 281MW of reciprocating engines and 366MW from a combined-cycle gas turbine plant.
A contract for 453MW of capacity was secured by one of the units at Uniper’s Ratcliffe coal power station, although EDF’s West Burton A coal plant failed to secure any agreements.
New build generation won contracts for a total of 290MW of capacity, including 154MW of reciprocating engines and 87MW of energy storage. There was additionally 111MW of proven and 129MW unproven demand-side response. The existing East West Interconnector to the Republic of Ireland also secured an agreement for 295MW.
Auction progression
The transitional auction for 2017/18 also cleared at £45/kW but was dedicated solely to demand-side response and only procured 312MW of capacity.
Note: All capacity figures given are for de-rated capacity and rounded to the nearest megawatt.