Reserve procurement and flexibility services in power systems with high renewable capacity: Effects of integration on different market designs

This paper investigates different reserve issues inspired by the European situation, focusing on both the moment when reserves are procured and the degree of coordination among Transmission System Operators (TSOs) in that procurement. We present three scheduling models formulated as stochastic programs that represent the day-ahead energy market, the reserve procurement, and the real-time balancing market in a renewable-dominated power system. Two of the proposed models are inspired by reserve procurement mechanisms currently applied in Europe, where reserves are committed either before (Model 1) or after (Model 2) the clearing of the day-ahead energy market. Then, we use as benchmark a third model in which energy and reserve capacity are co-optimized (Model 3). In all models, we consider the procurement of both conventional and upward/downward reserves. We also assess the impact of these organizations on market participants’ remuneration and test the impact of cross-border constraints as those applying in the European power system. The case study is based on the IEEE 24-node RTS, considering the uncertainty in renewable power production and demand. Our results show that Model 1 is the least efficient market design as it leads to a misallocation of the available capacity, while Model 2 becomes as efficient as Model 3 when the TSOs procure reserve in a coordinated way. Finally, a coordinated procurement of reserves reduces the system operating costs in all models.