Electricity grid in-feed from renewable sources: A risk for pumped-storage hydro plants?

Author

Hildmann, Marcus ; Ulbig, Andreas ; Andersson, Göran

Author_Institution

Power Syst. Lab., ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

fYear

2011

fDate

25-27 May 2011

Firstpage

185

Lastpage

190

Abstract

The ongoing large-scale deployment of new renewable energy sources (RES), mostly in the form of wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) units, causes an increasing share of stochastic electricity in-feed, which inevitably has impacts on electricity spot markets. In this paper, an analysis of the impacts of RES in-feeds on the spot market price spread as well as its volatility is presented. The potential risk that these impacts on spot prices may pose for the business model of pumped-storage hydro plants is discussed. Furthermore, the dependency of spot prices on wind turbine and PV electricity in-feeds are studied. The presented analysis focuses on the situation in Germany with its, in relative and absolute terms, high share of stochastic electricity in-feed and its mature spot market.

Keywords

hydroelectric power; photovoltaic power systems; power grids; power markets; pumped-storage power stations; risk management; stochastic processes; wind turbines; RES in-feeds; electricity spot markets; large-scale renewable energy source deployment; photovoltaic unit; pumped-storage hydroelectric plant risk; renewable source; stochastic electricity grid in-feed; wind turbine; Business; Electricity; Europe; Stochastic processes; Wind forecasting; Wind turbines;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Energy Market (EEM), 2011 8th International Conference on the European

Conference_Location

Zagreb

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-285-1

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-61284-284-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EEM.2011.5953005

Filename

5953005