Impact on hydropower plant income from participating in reserve capacity markets

The aim of this work is to simulate prices in the markets for spot and spinning reserve capacity in the Nordic region. We consider four selected seasonal weeks using a model framework for multi-market price forecasting in hydro-thermal power systems. Five different cases for reserve capacity requirements are studied: no requirements, requirements per country or price area with or without the possibility to exchange reserves by reserving transmission capacity between regions. The realized income of specific hydropower plants participating in these markets was quantified for selected time periods, based on a 2030 scenario for the European power system. The results show that for certain plants, the income from participating in the reserve capacity market contributes with up to 54 % of total income under certain conditions.

Index Terms: Hydro-Thermal Scheduling, Power Market
Modeling, Electricity Price Forecasting, Reserve capacity.