Renewable Integration in Balancing and Ancilliary Services Market in the EU Markets

Over the past decade, Wind Power has experienced tremendous growth all throughout the world, whether that be due to its lack of CO2 emissions or because of the falling costs that make renewable technologies competitive with conventional generation, this trend shows no signs of halting any time soon. As such, renewable energy penetration is expected to keep increasing and as a result of the intermittent nature of these technologies an increased strain will be placed on the global electrical system. This will cause and increase in the importance of the ancillary services and balancing markets as these mechanisms ensure the continued stability of our systems. Wind production forecasts are not perfect and the producers must pay for the imbalance they cause, this paper focuses on a comparative analysis of several mechanisms that can be used as a way of reducing this imbalance cost, from the perspective of a wind energy producer. These mechanisms are the provision of ancillary services, the participation in the intraday market and the application of electricity storage systems. This analysis is carried out for a few European markets, they are then compared as a way of understanding which design elements are more favorable to the inclusion of renewable energy generation