Adding and Managing Competitions

The following instructions and guidance are for system operators (SO) who need to add, edit or manage competitions via the competitions file. For SOs interested in running a visibility only competition, please also see the visibility only competitions support article. 

Downloading the Competition Template

1. Navigate to Manage > Competitions 
2. To upload new competitions, download the latest template by selecting ‘Download latest template’
3. To view and edit existing competition data, select the ‘download existing competition’ button.

Input Competition Data

There are four sheets within the file which will be explained below:

Tab 1 - README : Once the competition file has been downloaded, open it and read the first sheet “README”.  This will provide guidance on how to populate the competition file. 

Tab 2 - Competitions : this is used to set the structure of the competitions that will be run on Piclo. Please note that It is advisable to use a naming convention for the Competition Ref, as they can't be re-used and are the unique identifier for all data associated with a competition.

Tab 3 - Competition Boundaries : this is how a SO adds a bounding area to the competition. There are multiple methods to do this however one of the simplest way of pre-loading area information is via a GeoPackage file. Read about how to pre-load boundary data in the GeoPackage file.

Tab 4 - Service Windows : allows the SO to populate details of the flexibility service associated with each competition. Service windows are set within service periods for example a service period called ‘Summer 2024’ (from 1st April 2024 until 30th September 2024) can have a weekday morning window of 9am - 11am Monday - Friday and a weekday evening window 6pm - 10pm. There is no limit to the number of service periods or service windows a competition can have. 

Fixed Data Input Fields

Within the file on the competition sheet there are a number of fixed data inputs. The below list describes the current options available. If additional options are required, please contact support@picloflex.com

• Power Type 
  • Active Power
  • Reactive Power
• Need Type
  • Post Fault
  • Pre Fault
  • Reinforcement Deferral
  • Compliance
  • Other
• Need Direction
  • Deficit (Active Power)
  • Excess (Active Power)
  • Import (Reactive Power)
  • Export (Reactive Power)
• Product Type
  • Sustain
  • Secure
  • Dynamic
  • Restore
• Connection kV
  • 0.24
  • 0.4
  • 6.6
  • 11
  • 22
  • 33
  • 66
  • 132
• Competition Type
  • Availability & Utilisation
  • Utilisation
  • Service Fee
  • Capacity 
• Fixed Price Competition
  • True
  • False
• Public Holiday Handling
  • Include
  • Exclude
  • (Default is Ignore)

Upload a Competition File

When all of the required data and edits have been made to the competition file, return to your Piclo account. Go to Manage > Competitions. Within the ‘Upload files’ section, select the ‘Choose file’ button to upload the file. Once the competition file has completed processing (this can take a few minutes), a new row will appear in the file history table. Within this row there are four columns to pay particular attention to; ‘created’, ‘error’, ‘updated’ and ‘unchanged’. These columns should match with the data populated within the competition file. Successfully created competitions will then appear on your dashboard. The successful competitions will only be visible to the SO of that network area.

Troubleshooting Errors

• If the number of created, updated or unchanged competitions does not match the data uploaded, review the number of ‘errors’ and or read the error message(s) within the file history. Select the ‘view’ button associated with the file reference. This will open a dropdown showing the row details which have resulted in an error.
• Follow any suggestions presented where errors have occurred. This will require returning to the competition file that you have just uploaded to cross reference the current competition data to the relevant ‘row item’ number which identifies which competition had an error. 
• Once all errors have been addressed, save a new version of the competition file and reupload it to the account using the upload competition file process.
• Should the errors persist or it’s not clear what the resolution is, please do contact support@picloflex.com for support. 

How to Archive a Competition

Deleting a row in the competition file will not delete the competition. If you do wish for a competition to no longer appear on the map, you will need to archive the competition. To do this please follow the below steps:

1. Go to Manage > Competitions > Download existing competitions. 
2. Once the competition file has opened, go to the ‘Competition’ sheet and navigate to the archive date in column R to populate the desired date and times.
3. Please also ensure that the competition open and close dates are adjusted to be before the archive date.  
4. Re-upload the file to archive the competition 

Service Windows

Should you wish to upload custom availability hours per service window, you can do so, by opening the 'service window' tab and navigate to the 'Available Hours Override' column (U). If this field is not amended, the availability hours per service window will display the entire service period as default.