Impact of reserve market integration on the value of the North Sea offshore grid alternatives

Expected large scale integration of offshore wind power in the North Sea in future scenarios, 2020-2030, contribute to challenges on transmission planning and system operation in the Northern European electricity network. Moreover, the intermittency of the renewable resources makes the operational planning, forecasting, balancing, and control of the system more challenging. In this paper, a comparison is carried out between two reserve procurement market models. This is done by simulating non- and fully-integrated Northern European market using a 2030 scenario in combination with the effect of two different strategies for the development of the North Sea offshore grid: Radial grid and Meshed grid. The day-ahead market is modeled as a common market on an aggregate level for the whole European continent. Reserve procurement is done simultaneously with the clearing of the day-ahead market. For the analysis of day-ahead dispatch, a DC optimal power flow is used. The results show that about EUR 262 million and EUR 326 million per year could be saved as a result of the integration of the Northern European reserve market for the meshed and radial offshore grid topologies respectively.