In order to mitigate the adverse effects that VRG may cause on the system frequency, some System Operators (SOs) are making profound regulatory changes aimed to value the response speed in the provision of frequency control ancillary services.
Ancillary services markets are evolving in Europe to integrate RESs and DERs. Asymmetric procurement or reserves is the main win–win evolution. Going towards marginal price and harmonizing the products can be beneficial as well. Central vs. self-dispatch system: an ongoing debate entailing many trade-offs.
To avoid jeopardizing the power system, they should be effectively included in the Ancillary Services Markets (ASMs), which procure the resources for balancing and safely dispatching the system. This work presents a meta-analysis of the evolution of ASMs and the underlying regulatory trade-offs.
Traditionally, most ancillary services such as reserve capacity, inertia, frequency control, and voltage control were provided by large thermal power plants. Today, smaller CHP units and electric boilers deliver a significant share of regulating power.
We refer to “frequency control ancillary services” (FCAS) as all ancillary services used by the system operator to control the system's frequency. This means that e.g. the spinning reserve products of the US as well as the manually activated frequency restoration reserves in Europe can be considered FCAS.
As frequency regulation markets across Europe saturate, new installations will be driven by new market opportunities and battery energy storage systems adding new sources of revenue. Frequency regulation has been core driver for early large-scale batteries across Europe