OREANDA-NEWS. December 14, 2015. Paul Smith, SSE’s Managing Director of Generation, said:

“The GB Capacity Market, now in its second year, is designed to keeps the lights on at the lowest cost to the customer whilst ensuring generators are fairly remunerated for the service they provide to help meet the peaks in customers’ requirement for electricity.

 “Whilst Fiddler’s Ferry was unsuccessful in securing a capacity agreement this time round it doesn’t affect existing operations in the short term. The station will continue to be available over this winter and has provisionally agreed to provide up to 422MW of capacity to National Grid’s Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR) service next winter. In the medium term, Fiddler’s Ferry has a capacity agreement to provide 1,294MW of de-rated capacity for one year from October 2018, which was secured during last year’s Capacity Market auction. 

“Thermal generation is continuing to operate in very challenging market conditions. Following this year’s auction round, SSE will continue to consider the options for the future operation of all of its power generating plant, including Fiddler’s Ferry.”