Musselroe Wind Farm FCAS Trial

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The Musselroe Wind Farm FCAS Trial project is aimed at understanding the economic and commercial case for FCAS participation by wind farms and if viable, enabling the frequency controllers at Musselroe Wind Farm.The Project will support the business case for current and future participants seeking to participate in the FCAS market. The project will also evaluate the installation of utility-scale storage to capture energy currently not dispatched due to a combination of network and wholesale market conditions, as well as providing FCAS and other grid support services from Musselroe Wind Farm.Key resultsThe trial successfully provided FCAS services within the NEM’s specifications. Over the course of nearly 3 years, several software updates and configuration changes, as well as 21 separate tests, on 14 May 2021, Musselroe Wind Farm was able to successfully test and prove compatibility with the NEM requirements for FCAS provision, and was registered for FCAS in November 2021.The critical outputs of the project include:demonstration of the ability of an existing wind farm with Vestas turbines to deliver FCAS and undertake a series of tests in consultation with TasNetworks and AEMOsummary of the commercial and economic assessment of wind farm participation in the FCAS marketdetermination of the requirements for interfacing with AEMO for the purposes of control, communications, and wind forecastingdetermination of the technical impact of enabling FCAS in an existing wind farm rather than a new build wind farmevaluation of the integration of utility-scale battery storage to help provide FCAS as well as capture and sell “spilled wind” energy that would otherwise be curtaileddetail of MRWF’s participation in the FCAS market.

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