Pan-European balancing market: Benefits for the Italian power system

The paper reports on a study aimed at assessing the impact of a transnational balancing market with a study case referred to a geographical region including Italy, Austria and Slovenia. The assessment has been carried out within the European project eBADGE by developing and running the model of a multi-zonal balancing market and comparing scenarios with and without the possibility to share energy bids between different countries. The assessment focused on economic competitiveness (in terms of social welfare) and integration (in terms of usage of cross-border transmission corridors). The results show that the integration of these three markets would provide important benefits for the Italian power system with savings that can reach values up to 60% with respect to the present situation, where the balancing markets are cleared separately.