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With IKEA retail operations in 31 markets around the globe, Ingka Group is the largest IKEA retailer and represents about 90% of IKEA retail sales. As part of their effort to support the transition towards renewable energy, Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, partnered with Apex Clean Energy, an independent power producer with 60+ GW of utility-scale wind, solar, and other energy resources in development, to develop the 16.4 MW Cameron Storage project in Cameron County, Texas. Apex and Ingka Investments selected Ascend Analytics to optimize live bidding operations for Cameron Storage through the SmartBidder™ platform.
The platform is the most widely used algorithmic bid optimization tool in US markets, and its flexibility allows clients like Apex and Ingka Investments to deploy customized bid strategies and risk management and trading policies. The Ascend Analytics solution supports this marquee energy storage project in maximizing the value of delivered energy and ancillary services across day-ahead (DA) and real-time (RT) markets in ERCOT while limiting risk exposure to acceptable levels. With this resource, Ingka Investments can continue to make impactful investments that support clean energy integration and emissions reductions.
Co-located with Ingka Investments’ 165 MW Cameron Wind Farm in Cameron County, Texas, the Cameron Storage Project represented Ingka Group’s first-ever standalone storage project. It also serves as part of Ingka Investments’ €1 billion commitment to invest in transitional technology solutions.
As the asset manager for the project, Apex needed a platform that allowed the project to define, evaluate, and select multiple bidding strategies to maximize performance across different market conditions while considering physical system constraints, market risks, and ISO rules. Apex also wanted a bid optimization solution that would give them the ability to directly manually override bids and maintain a high degree of control.
Critically, Ingka Investments and Apex prioritized the development of strategies that would help maximize the value of the Cameron Storage Project within a clearly articulated risk profile.
The Apex asset management team selected SmartBidder for multiple reasons, including the platform’s intuitive user interface, the ease of use for controlling and overriding bids, and for SmartBidder’s machine learning-driven ability to optimize risk-return for power market performance. Apex leveraged SmartBidder to produce ex-ante out-of-sample backcast data for a range of potential bidding strategies.
Apex was able to assess the revenue generation profile and risk exposure using a consistent framework across all scenarios and market conditions considered. The iterative process of strategy design and assessment of risk-return using SmartBidder’s built-in reporting features assisted the team in going to market with a set of optimized bidding strategies.
Figure 1 presents a comparison of cumulative gross revenues for the storage project over a one-month period in Spring 2024. Operators use these data to assess how different strategies perform relative to each other over critical periods. In the example below, Mt. Sopris with ECRS performed exceptionally well during the volatile events on the 8th and 17th of May.
In addition, Apex and Inkga Investments were able to evaluate the revenue distribution of the top performing Mt. Sopris with ECRS strategy to confirm that daily losses were within acceptable limits.
Figure 2 presents revenue distribution statistics on daily revenues for the various strategies considered. Mt Sopris with ECRS is found to have the highest mean daily returns as well the highest 10th percentile of daily returns.
The team’s risk management policies and trading procedures leveraged data from backcasts to quantitatively evaluate risk-return during the policy definition process, while also defining qualitative risk exposures, mitigation methods, and potential responses. This process began with a broad overview of risk posture, from which Apex and Ingka Investments developed a set of ‘guardrails’ around the operation of the Cameron Storage Project that accounted for stakeholder risk tolerance, established permissible activities and restrictions, and defined loss/risk limits. The SmartBidder platform and analyst team provided analysis and data that informed this process, assisting in the development of strategies in response to specific market conditions like price risk, volume shortfalls, extreme weather events, and operational events.
The SmartBidder team helped ensure alignment between these policies and the strategies being deployed within the platform. The risk management oversight and reporting are further supported by SmartBidder’s dashboards, reporting, API, and analyst team on an ongoing basis. Finally, SmartBidder enabled Apex and Ingka Investments to define roles and responsibilities among different stakeholders for ongoing operations in an operational protocol that helps align day- to-day activities with the risk policies.
“With the assistance of Ascend’s SmartBidder platform, Ingka Investments and Apex developed risk management policies and trading procedures prior to launching the Cameron Project. Apex has a strategy in place for manual overrides that accounts for all physical and contractual constraints of the asset, including validation layers to ensure that automatic bids and overrides don’t violate those constraints,” noted Dr. Carlos Blanco, Managing Director, Risk Management & ESG for Ascend Analytics. “The end result is a durable framework that ensures proper oversight.”
The Cameron Storage project joins a fast-growing list that now includes 2.3 GW of energy storage assets in ERCOT, CAISO, and PJM under management with SmartBidder. The Apex and Ingka Investments teams can expect to receive the same exceptional service and market-leading revenue capture, 10% to 25% over competing solutions, that characterizes the SmartBidder offering.
SmartBidder™ uniquely provides a unified platform for custom bid optimization combined with scheduling services to manage asset performance and operations for storage, renewable, and hybrid assets. SmartBidder maximizes revenue and reduces risk, offering asset owners and operators a 100% increase relative to traditional arbitrage strategy, as well as a 50% Sharpe Ratio improvement. The solution enables users to develop their own customized bid strategies based on nodal specific forecasts, asset specific constraints, and risk-based optimization for day-ahead and real-time bids.
With IKEA retail operations in 31 markets around the globe, Ingka Group is the largest IKEA retailer and represents about 90% of IKEA retail sales. As part of their effort to support the transition towards renewable energy, Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, partnered with Apex Clean Energy, an independent power producer with 60+ GW of utility-scale wind, solar, and other energy resources in development, to develop the 16.4 MW Cameron Storage project in Cameron County, Texas. Apex and Ingka Investments selected Ascend Analytics to optimize live bidding operations for Cameron Storage through the SmartBidder™ platform.
The platform is the most widely used algorithmic bid optimization tool in US markets, and its flexibility allows clients like Apex and Ingka Investments to deploy customized bid strategies and risk management and trading policies. The Ascend Analytics solution supports this marquee energy storage project in maximizing the value of delivered energy and ancillary services across day-ahead (DA) and real-time (RT) markets in ERCOT while limiting risk exposure to acceptable levels. With this resource, Ingka Investments can continue to make impactful investments that support clean energy integration and emissions reductions.
Co-located with Ingka Investments’ 165 MW Cameron Wind Farm in Cameron County, Texas, the Cameron Storage Project represented Ingka Group’s first-ever standalone storage project. It also serves as part of Ingka Investments’ €1 billion commitment to invest in transitional technology solutions.
As the asset manager for the project, Apex needed a platform that allowed the project to define, evaluate, and select multiple bidding strategies to maximize performance across different market conditions while considering physical system constraints, market risks, and ISO rules. Apex also wanted a bid optimization solution that would give them the ability to directly manually override bids and maintain a high degree of control.
Critically, Ingka Investments and Apex prioritized the development of strategies that would help maximize the value of the Cameron Storage Project within a clearly articulated risk profile.
The Apex asset management team selected SmartBidder for multiple reasons, including the platform’s intuitive user interface, the ease of use for controlling and overriding bids, and for SmartBidder’s machine learning-driven ability to optimize risk-return for power market performance. Apex leveraged SmartBidder to produce ex-ante out-of-sample backcast data for a range of potential bidding strategies.
Apex was able to assess the revenue generation profile and risk exposure using a consistent framework across all scenarios and market conditions considered. The iterative process of strategy design and assessment of risk-return using SmartBidder’s built-in reporting features assisted the team in going to market with a set of optimized bidding strategies.
Figure 1 presents a comparison of cumulative gross revenues for the storage project over a one-month period in Spring 2024. Operators use these data to assess how different strategies perform relative to each other over critical periods. In the example below, Mt. Sopris with ECRS performed exceptionally well during the volatile events on the 8th and 17th of May.
In addition, Apex and Inkga Investments were able to evaluate the revenue distribution of the top performing Mt. Sopris with ECRS strategy to confirm that daily losses were within acceptable limits.
Figure 2 presents revenue distribution statistics on daily revenues for the various strategies considered. Mt Sopris with ECRS is found to have the highest mean daily returns as well the highest 10th percentile of daily returns.
The team’s risk management policies and trading procedures leveraged data from backcasts to quantitatively evaluate risk-return during the policy definition process, while also defining qualitative risk exposures, mitigation methods, and potential responses. This process began with a broad overview of risk posture, from which Apex and Ingka Investments developed a set of ‘guardrails’ around the operation of the Cameron Storage Project that accounted for stakeholder risk tolerance, established permissible activities and restrictions, and defined loss/risk limits. The SmartBidder platform and analyst team provided analysis and data that informed this process, assisting in the development of strategies in response to specific market conditions like price risk, volume shortfalls, extreme weather events, and operational events.
The SmartBidder team helped ensure alignment between these policies and the strategies being deployed within the platform. The risk management oversight and reporting are further supported by SmartBidder’s dashboards, reporting, API, and analyst team on an ongoing basis. Finally, SmartBidder enabled Apex and Ingka Investments to define roles and responsibilities among different stakeholders for ongoing operations in an operational protocol that helps align day- to-day activities with the risk policies.
“With the assistance of Ascend’s SmartBidder platform, Ingka Investments and Apex developed risk management policies and trading procedures prior to launching the Cameron Project. Apex has a strategy in place for manual overrides that accounts for all physical and contractual constraints of the asset, including validation layers to ensure that automatic bids and overrides don’t violate those constraints,” noted Dr. Carlos Blanco, Managing Director, Risk Management & ESG for Ascend Analytics. “The end result is a durable framework that ensures proper oversight.”
The Cameron Storage project joins a fast-growing list that now includes 2.3 GW of energy storage assets in ERCOT, CAISO, and PJM under management with SmartBidder. The Apex and Ingka Investments teams can expect to receive the same exceptional service and market-leading revenue capture, 10% to 25% over competing solutions, that characterizes the SmartBidder offering.
SmartBidder™ uniquely provides a unified platform for custom bid optimization combined with scheduling services to manage asset performance and operations for storage, renewable, and hybrid assets. SmartBidder maximizes revenue and reduces risk, offering asset owners and operators a 100% increase relative to traditional arbitrage strategy, as well as a 50% Sharpe Ratio improvement. The solution enables users to develop their own customized bid strategies based on nodal specific forecasts, asset specific constraints, and risk-based optimization for day-ahead and real-time bids.
Ascend Analytics is the leading provider of market intelligence and analytics solutions for the energy transition. The company's offerings enable decision makers in power development and supply procurement to maximize the value of planning, operating, and managing risk for renewable, storage, and other assets. From real-time to 30-year horizons, their forecasts and insights are at the foundation of over $50 billion in project financing assessments. Ascend provides energy market stakeholders with the clarity and confidence to successfully navigate the rapidly shifting energy landscape.
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