Introduction to Piclo APIs

Piclo’s collection of APIs provide a way for applications to interact with all areas of Piclo Flex. You can interact with Piclo Flex via the Piclo Flex user interface (Process Overview here) or via API. 

The below information is for Flexible Service Providers (FSPs) who are interested in becoming integrated with Piclo Flex via API.

In this article

Piclo Flex Overview

Procurement

Piclo Flex is an independent marketplace that brings FSPs together with Distribution System Operators (DSOs) to procure local flexibility services. 

System Operators (SOs) procure flexibility through an auction process in which they create ‘Competitions’ on Piclo Flex. Flex Service Providers (FSPs) can bid into these Competitions to win flexibility contracts. A Competition has many characteristics such as a geographic area, a power flow requirement (e.g. import / export), service windows (e.g. 3pm-7pm, weekdays, March-August 2021), and Competition open and close dates, amongst others.

As an FSP, you start by registering your assets (which can be anything from an EV car charging point to a diesel engine), and check what Competitions they qualify into. Please note flexibility procurement cycles vary in length, and there might not be any open Competitions in your region at the time you first register.

Should you have assets qualifying in an open Competition, then you can start bidding. Please consult our historic Competition data to get price signals of previous winning Bids for both your Bid’s Availability Price andUtilisation Price (NB, depending on the number of Bids, price will likely be a key factor in determining if the SO accepts your Bid).

When a Competition closes the SO will decide to accept or reject (providing a reason) each of your Bids. If accepted, you will be notified and receive confirmation of your Contractual Obligations with the SO. This completes the procurement process. 

Operations

If you have Contractual Obligations with a SO, you may receive a Dispatch Instruction requesting that you dispatch your asset(s), for a given capacity at a given time. 

Should you wish, you can sign up to our Dispatch Webhook to be notified of Dispatch Instructions. 

Settlement

We are currently developing our settlement solution which will include performance report creation (using baseline, utilisation and meter data) and creation of invoice data. If you are interested in finding out more about these features, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Detailed Steps

Get Setup

If you haven't already, register on Piclo Flex as a FSP:

  1. Create your personal login
  2. Create an account for the associated FSP business
  3. Once approved, email us at support@picloflex.com and request Machine User credentials.
  4. Receive your machine user credentials for both Piclo Flex Production and Experience environments(coming soon)..
Review Opportunities

Once you are registered you can have a look at what Competitions are live:

  1. Use the Bidding Opportunities API to fetch open Competitions for which you have qualified assets.
  2. Review the Competitions, what requirements they have and to ascertain if they might be suitable.
  3. For further details on reviewing opportunities within DSO flex, please see Market Data Access
Company Qualification

In order to take part in a Competition, you might need to first sign up to a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS):

  1. In the UI, navigate to Manage > Applications, you’ll find the open applications you can apply to.
  2. Use the form on Piclo to apply and receive approval from the system operator.
  3. Read more about the full DPS process.
Asset Qualification

Adding assets is the next key step to qualify and progress with Competitions.

  1. To find out all the details you need related to your assets, please see our Asset Integration Tutorial.
  2. Once your assets have been loaded, the next step will be to qualify these assets once there is a relevant active Competition. Read how the qualification process works.
Bidding

Assuming your business has been approved by the DPS (if required by the SO), your asset(s) pass the technical assessment and they qualify for a Competition, you will receive an automatic email from Piclo when that Competition opens.

  1. Once the DSO’s Competition is open and you are planning to bid, please follow the guide on how to bid into Competitions via API. [LINK]
  2. When the SO has completed their assessment of the Competition, you’ll receive an email with the results.
View Contractual Obligations

OurContractual Obligations API can be used to fetch your Contract Obligations, obligated assets and any availability variations stored in Piclo Flex.

Receive Dispatch Instructions

Learn about this here. 

Useful Links
The Piclo Flex Experience environment

The Piclo Experience environment runs a scheduled, mock Piclo Flex Competition every day. You can use this environment to explore our APIs and experience the Piclo Flex end to end journey in a risk-free way. As of March 2023, this environment is coming very soon. Please feel free to email us to register your interest and we’ll get in touch when it is ready.

Want to chat?

Contact the team at support@picloflex.com and set up a demo or ask for support.

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