Name: NEM Grid-Scale Battery Dispatch & Revenue Data
Creator: NEMPulse
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Question 1

What does capture % mean?

Accepted Answer

Capture is a battery's actual revenue as a percentage of a benchmark. NEMPulse shows three tiers: actual revenue, a forecast-informed floor, and a perfect-foresight ceiling. Capture vs the forecast floor is the fairer, realistic number; capture vs the perfect ceiling (an unreachable 100%) is the theoretical maximum. Both benchmarks are one linear program that co-optimises energy arbitrage and FCAS together within the unit's SOC, power and capacity limits.

Question 2

Does the optimal benchmark include FCAS?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The LP co-optimises energy arbitrage and all 10 FCAS markets together on one shared battery, so a MW committed to FCAS is unavailable for arbitrage in that interval (no double-counting). The actual, forecast-informed and perfect-foresight tiers are all combined energy + FCAS; each can be broken down into its energy and FCAS components. FCAS forecast quality is poor, so the FCAS part of the forecast floor sits only modestly above actual.

Question 3

What is the forecast-informed floor?

Accepted Answer

The most the same energy + FCAS LP could earn acting only on AEMO's free public PREDISPATCH price forecast — using only the forecast issued before each trading day (no hindsight) — then settled at the prices that actually occurred. It is a public-information benchmark, not an operator target: real desks use better private forecasts, so a unit below the floor is not necessarily poorly run. It sits between actual and the perfect-foresight ceiling.

Question 4

Can a battery score 100% capture?

Accepted Answer

Against the perfect-foresight ceiling, in practice no — it assumes every future price is known in advance, which no operator has. Against the forecast floor it can, and a unit with a better private forecast than AEMO's public one can even exceed the floor.

Actual vs Optimal Dispatch Revenue