Bid Management Process

This article will give an overview of the bidding process for a system operator (SO). 

Bidding as a Flexible Service Provider

Flexible Service Providers (FSPs) with qualifying assets can bid into the associated competition(s). The allowed competition bid structure is defined in the competitions file by the SO, and every bid is submitted against a service window of a competition. 

Each bids that a FSP submits will be required to include the below fixed data points:

• Capacity (MW) - this is limited by the total relevant capacity of all the qualifying assets, or the required capacity defined in the service window (whichever is lower).
• Maximum run time - specified as a duration in D HH:MM:SS. It is the maximum run time, given by the FSP, that the qualified asset or group of assets can deliver the bidded capacity for.

There are additional fields of data that may be required by a FSP while submitting a bid, however precisely which fields are required is determined by how the competition was set up (specifically, it’s “competition type”):

• Availability price (£/MW/h) - if it was requested via the competition file
• Utilisation price (£/MWh) - if it was required via the competition file
• Service fee (£/MW) - if it was required via the competition file
• Fixed price - fixed price competitions are a special case where the SO defines the bid price as fixed, and FSPs must bid with those values

There are additional features that FSPs can use when bidding which are detailed below:

• Split bids - this allows the FSP to divide their total MW of qualifying capacity into multiple bids at different price points e.g. they have 2 MW of qualifying capacity, they can bid 1 MW with price A and the second MW with price B. Another example is if they had 10 MW qualifying made up of a 6MW and 4 MW asset, but during their first submission they selected only one of those assets and submitted a bid for 4 MW, they could submit an additional unique bid for the second asset up to 6 MW (depending on the MW of need). 
• Asset specific bids - this allows FSPs to take the aggregated assets (which is the default position) and select only a subset of those assets for a specific bid submission. If assets are removed from the group, then the associated capacity calculation is updated e.g. if they have 2 assets both with 1 MW, and they deselect one asset, then they can only bid 1 MW with that remaining asset.

It is best practice to clearly specify any additional bidding rules or conditions that FSPs should adhere to in the pre competition documentation (or ITT). It would then be part of the bid assessment process to cross reference any bids with specific rules that were stipulated beforehand. 

Managing bids as an SO

FSPs can edit bids right up until competition close date and time, however bids are only visible to SOs once the competition is closed. SOs can see all bids both via the platform interface and via a downloadable spreadsheet.  There is currently no fixed timeline on when a competition's results are expected to be confirmed (although it can be specified in SO documentation).

Please see below the steps involved for a SO within the bidding process:

• View competition results 
• Decision bids
• Confirm bids

For a detailed guide on each of these steps please see Decisioning and Confirming Bids

Contractual obligations 

When competitions have been confirmed, all accepted bids will automatically be available to download from within the 'Contracts' area of the platform. To locate the contractual obligations from a past or present competition round, follow the below instructions:

1. Navigate to Manage > Contracts 
2. Select the 'Contracts' download button in the top right hand corner of the page to view a file with all accepted bids.