SmartBidder

Core Features

Ascend Analytics' SmartBidder platform combines advanced market forecasting with automated trading and scheduling services to support commercial operation of energy storage and hybrid renewable assets. Its capabilities include:

• AI-Assisted Bid Optimization: Uses probabilistic and AI-assisted models to optimize bids in day-ahead and real-time electricity markets based on nodal prices, asset constraints, and risk tolerance.

• Automated Scheduling Services: Provides end-to-end ISO bidding, scheduling, settlements support, outage communications, and operational automation, either as a managed service or self-service platform.

• Dynamic Re-Optimization: Continuously updates bids using real-time state-of-charge (SOC) information and evolving market forecasts to capture short-duration price spikes.

• Customizable Trading Strategies: Enables users to develop and compare multiple bidding strategies, define risk policies, and incorporate their own price forecasts and analytical models.

• Performance Dashboards: Delivers real-time operational dashboards showing bids, dispatch, revenues, market conditions, and battery state of charge.

• Portfolio Management: Supports optimization and reporting across multiple storage and hybrid assets operating in different U.S. electricity markets.

Closing Insights

As battery energy storage becomes increasingly important for balancing renewable electricity systems, maximizing market revenues has become a complex optimization problem involving energy, ancillary services, and rapidly changing price signals. SmartBidder addresses this challenge by combining AI-assisted forecasting with operational automation, enabling asset owners to pursue higher revenues while managing operational and market risks. According to Ascend Analytics, the platform manages more than 4.9 GW of storage assets and was used by more than 20% of new storage systems in the United States commissioned in 2024. It also reports that SmartBidder consistently outperforms conventional bidding approaches in markets such as ERCOT and CAISO.

SmartBidder's AI-driven optimization and scheduling capabilities have recently been strengthened through its partnership with Tenaska Power Services. Major examples of deployment include Ingka Investments' Cameron Storage project in ERCOT and a large hybrid solar-plus-storage project on the CAISO grid, where SmartBidder is used to optimize market participation and revenue generation. Pricing is available on request.