European balancing markets

Balancing markets are critical for the operation of power systems. TSOs use these markets for the acquisition of the resources needed for the balance between generation and demand on real-time (minute-to-minute operation). Balancing markets, since their beginning, were conceived to cope with real-time operation issues such as forecast errors on generation/demand and unplanned power outages due to a fault on generation units or transmission facility. Today, balancing markets are facing new challenges. One of them is the incorporation of a considerable amount of intermittent renewable generation on the generation mix, which could impose an increase on the volumes traded on balancing markets in order to ensure the correct performance of the system. Another issue is the tendency of displacing national energy markets by regional markets within which multi-area Day-Ahead trading is managed. This article presents the current designs of several European balancing markets, i.e. The Belgian, Swiss, German, Danish, Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch balancing markets. Since control reserves vary from one system to another, this article first presents a classification of the control reserves used within the surveyed systems. From the classification we proceed to the comparison of the assessment, remuneration (methods and structure), and cost recovery for secondary and tertiary reserves applied by each TSO.