A (not so) independent aggregator in the balancing market theory, policy and reality check

The aggregator has been touted as the key enabler of active engagement of distributed energy resources and promises to contribute to greater economic efficiency in the European balancing markets by providing cheap sources of flexibility. This paper presents an empirical analysis of how aggregators organize themselves in relation to other...

Distributed energy resources and the organized balancing market: A symbiosis yet? Case of three European balancing markets

Thanks to new technological advancements and EU policy impulse, distributed energy resources (DER) are poised to become a viable alternative to conventional electricity generation for the provision of balancing services to transmission system operators. In this paper we show that the design variables that affect DER access to and...

Trading power instead of energy in day-ahead electricity markets

Day-ahead electricity markets are inefficient due to their coarse discretisation of time and their representation of electricity production and consumption in energy per time interval. This leads to excessive costs and infeasible schedules in the market clearing results. Some real-world systems have increased the resolution to improve accuracy,...

Making the most of short-term flexibility in the balancing market: Opportunities and challenges of voluntary bids in the new balancing market design

Electricity balancing is one of the main demanders of short-term flexibility. To improve its integration, the recent regulation of the European Union introduces a common standalone balancing energy market. It allows actors that have not participated or not been awarded in the preceding balancing capacity market to participate as voluntary...

African power pools and regional electricity market design: Taking stock of regional integration in energy sectors

While the traditional perspective on regional power pools is that of regional electricity markets, regional power pools in Africa are development tools with unrepresentative and under-researched dynamics in their evolution and market design. Five African power pools are under development to bring the continent into a single electricity market....