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...

Aggregators today and tomorrow: From intermediaries to local orchestrators?

At the forefront of energy transition, aggregators unlock value in front of and behind the energy meter. The business models of aggregators are changing rapidly, influenced by changes in technology, the market design, and regulatory framework. This chapter provides an overview of the leading aggregators in Europe and their underlying business...

Effect of market design on strategic bidding behavior: Model-based analysis of European electricity balancing markets

Market-based procurement of balancing services in Europe is prone to strategic bidding due to the relatively small market size and a limited number of providers. In the European Union, balancing markets are undergoing substantial regulatory changes driven the efforts to harmonize the market design and better align it with the goals of the...

Integration of day-ahead market and redispatch to increase cross-border exchanges in the European electricity market

The zonal electricity market design in the Central Western European electricity market relies on redispatching generation units after market closure to manage congestion within bidding zones, while congestion between the zones is handled using flow-based market coupling. The combination of internal congestion in the meshed European network...

Redispatch and balancing: Same but different. Links, conflicts and solutions.

The authors provide a critical analysis of existing approaches to balancing and congestion management (specifically redispatch) and their effects on the incentives for service providers. This issue is particularly important in the view of the harmonization of ancillary service procurement in Europe, introduction of cross-border balancing...

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...

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...