Open Call for Ara Ake National Flex Discovery Fund (New Zealand)

Focus Areas

• The grant round is focused on reducing the barriers that FSPs — especially small and emerging innovators — face in participating in flexibility markets. These barriers include software integration, system testing, and customer engagement.

Tracks

• Track one – Platform on-boarding support:
  • Support flexibility service providers in becoming visible and discoverable to market participants on an openaccess flexibility platform.
• Track two – Develop availability of flexibility resources:
  • Support providers who are already on an open-access flexibility platform to scale or enhance the capacity or reliability of their flexibility resource.

Funding Information

• The total allocation across both Track 1 and Track 2 is limited to $1 million. Ara Ake will seek to award as many applicants as possible for the greatest value-for-money. This will involve some discretion and you may be contacted for a follow-up discussion regarding your application.
• Track one:
  • Individual applicants may apply for Track 1 funding up to $15,000. Please provide a detailed breakdown of costs and how funding will help you to achieve your connectivity and visibility goals. Funding is competitive and will be allocated based on the merits of your application.
• Track two:
  • Competitive process – funding will be awarded pro rata for lowest cost per kW of flexibility resource made available. You will need to provide a cost per kW figure and how you calculated it. If there are extraneous costs (i.e. people resource) then also include these, providing a detailed breakdown and how funding will help you to achieve your capacity or reliability goals.
  • There is no funding cap, however funding will be rewarded on a cost competitive basis.

Eligibility Criteria

• Be a flexibility service provider:
  • Provide evidence of their business model or solution and how it fits into the flexibility ecosystem.
  • Demonstrate the ability to deliver flexibility services either now or in the near future with grant support (provide timeline).
  • If already coordinating flexibility services, provide overview of current involvement in markets/programmes (e.g. reserves, wholesale, EDB programmes).
• Track one:
  • Be seeking to join a flexibility platform, and require funding to:
    • Integrate existing flexibility resources into the platform (e.g. APIs, OpenADR VEN, etc.).
    • Make their resource both visible and discoverable for use in the electricity system.
  • Use an open access platform:
    • Must be based on common communication protocols (e.g. OpenADR, IEEE 2030.5).
    • The platform must be accessible to all market participants.
    • Proprietary platforms are not eligible.
• Track two:
  • Already have flexibility resource that is:
    • Visible and discoverable to market participants on an existing open-access flexibility platform.
  • Seek funding to improve:
    • Volume (increase available flexibility capacity).
    • Diversity (increasing types of devices connected or locational/temporal diversity).
    • Deliverability (enhance availability, performance or reliability of the resource).

For more information, visit Ara Ake.