Life is all about balance. While more and more countries are switching to zero-emission renewable power sources like solar and wind, they’ll never be enough for a stable and cost-effective system on their own. Renewable power isn’t always available, so balancing power is essential to make sure the lights stay on no matter what. In this article, we’ll look more closely at how to make sure this critical capacity gets built.
Ancillary services – the additional capacity needed to guarantee a secure energy supply – are a vital part of power generation. The need for these services is set to grow as more renewable energy sources are integrated into grids around the world. In this article, we take a closer look at what can be done to ensure that sufficient ancillary service capacity is procured.
Countries around the world are integrating more renewables into their grids to decarbonise power generation. But renewable energy sources bring new challenges due to their intermittent nature. In order to ensure a stable and cost-effective energy supply, flexible power generation is needed. Here are four ways to help procure and incentivise the flexible generation needed to balance renewables.
Achieving Europe's decarbonisation goals will not be a simple task, but it can be sorted out. The European Commission needs to reform its electricity market design to place a value on flexible capacity technologies for the EU to achieve its net zero targets and improve energy security
US electric utilities could be missing out on millions in value for their customers by using outdated grid modelling techniques. This whitepaper published in collaboration with Reuters quantifies and calculates the value of flexibility is in a power system and shows that commonly used methodologies for grid planning in the US may result in sub-optimal outcomes for ratepayers.
The future looks promising for China’s power markets and ancillary services sector. New policy udpates to incentivise these services not only make the power system safe and stable, but will enable the adoption of more renewables, and lead to large-scale wind and solar projects that bring in substantial environmental benefits as well as economic rewards.
Considering the changing system needs, Wärtsilä commissioned KPMG to carry out an Ancillary Services Market Study to understand the market structure in India. How can we provide appropriate price signals to reflect both operational and resource requirements while encouraging efficient investment and retirement decisions?
