Evaluation of different balancing market designs with the EDisOn+Balancing model

Abstract

The work presented in this paper addresses outstanding issues in the context of the recently published Network Code on Electricity Balancing and is part of a European project in the ‘Intelligent Energy Europe program’, which focuses on electricity market designs to support a more efficient integration of renewable energy sources into the pan-European electricity system, in line with the 2020 policy objectives and their follow up towards the forthcoming 2030 targets. In this paper the developed model EDisOn+Balancing and the most important functionalities are explained and validated with real data of the year 2013. Geographical focus is put on central Europe. Afterwards, the different possible future balancing market mechanisms are evaluated, notably for the target year 2030. The analysis considers expected installed capacities of conventional power plants and also from renewable energy sources. The main objective is the quantitative and qualitative measurement of the different outcomes (like average price levels per balancing product, marginal cost reflectivity, etc.) and, consequently, to compile the ranking of analysed balancing market designs. Special focus is put on the procurement of balancing capacity and balancing energy products, and on the procurement of upward and downward balancing capacity products, which can be conducted joint or separated. Furthermore, the impacts of different minimum bid size levels (from 1 MW to 5 MW), the pricing of balancing products (pay-as-bid vs. marginal), the imbalance pricing system (dual, single, combined) and the settlement period (from 15 minutes to one hour) is analysed.