Post: Ancillary services and the future of power systems

Ancillary services and the future of power systems

When most people think about electricity, they think about generation and consumption, what rarely enters the picture is the vast and intricate set of supporting services that keep the grid stable every second of the day. These are known as ancillary services, and as power systems around the world undergo a profound shift toward renewable energy, understanding them has never been more important. A recent IEEE paper co-authored by GridBeyond’s experts explores how ancillary services are evolving to meet this challenge.

Ancillary services cover everything from frequency response and voltage control to black start capability. Traditionally provided as a byproduct of large spinning generators, these services are now under pressure as wind and solar displace conventional plant, reducing system inertia and increasing the speed at which frequency can fall following a fault.

The paper argues that ancillary services are central to secure system operation. But the ancillary services that kept grids stable in the era of large synchronous generators are being redesigned, augmented, and in some cases replaced by a new generation of market products built around speed, flexibility, and technological agnosticism. New services such as fast frequency response and flexible ramping capability are emerging, and battery storage, grid-forming inverters, and demand-side aggregation are increasingly the providers of choice.

The paper concludes that ancillary services are foundational to system security and must be placed at the centre of electricity market design. Getting the incentives right, attracting capable providers, and ensuring that markets reward the services the system genuinely needs is one of the defining engineering and policy challenges of the energy transition.

Read the paper