Tim Drees

Reserve providing in future generation systems considering renewable energy sources

For the coming years an increasing share of volatile feed-in from renewable energy sources in the electrical power system is expected. This feed-in will go along with rising uncertainties which have to be balanced in the generation system using flexibilities and balancing reserves. Thus, the efficient reserve coverage by power plants becomes more import and its provision is modeled within a unit commitment simulation of the European generation system in order to investigate the future reserve coverage and to identify the potential of reserve provision by renewable energy sources.

Proximal Bundle Methods in Unit Commitment Optimization

The augmented use of renewable energy sources will increase the volatility of the residual load in the next few years. Under these circumstances, the existing numerical methods for solving the unit commitment problem reach the performance limits in terms of their rate of convergence. Therefore new methods with a higher convergence are necessary in the unit commitment optimization. This paper intends to exemplify the use of Proximal Bundle Methods in large scale unit commitment.

Modeling of electricity pricing in European market simulations

The increasing share of renewable energies as well as the age structure of the thermal generation stack lead to big changes in the European energy system. This paper describes a method for determining market prices for electricity based on the cost-minimal European power plant dispatch and different mark-ups. Thus, the influences of these mark-ups on simulated prices are estimated. Exemplary results are shown for Germany for a backtesting scenario of the year 2014 and a future scenario for the year 2024. The results are compared to historical price patterns and show a better match with the historic prices, but also still room for improvement.

Macroeconomic benefit of integrated markets for reserve balancing in Europe

The increasing share of renewable energies in the European power generation system lead to rising uncertainties in power generation and increasing demand for flexibility. Additionally, the EU pushes the integration of the reserve markets by implementing a reserve exchange. This paper describes a market simulation method based on a three-step-approach to consider uncertainties in feed-in of RES and integrated reserve markets. At this, a fundamental optimization method based on a Lagrangian Relaxation is used. Exemplary results are shown for the year 2024. The results illustrate the macroeconomic benefit of the implementation of a reserve exchange in integrated reserve markets in Europe.

Impact of balancing energy on network congestions

The increasing share of power generation by renewable energy sources goes along with higher gradients as well as volatilities in feed-in and has sustained effects on the system balance. The transmission system operators use balancing reserves to compensate these imbalances. The pan-European provision of balancing reserves will have impacts on congestions in the transmission grid in future generation systems. This paper presents a method for simulation of activation of reserves and the induced impact on network congestions in the European transmission grid.