The North Seas Countries' Offshore Grid Initiative - Initial ... - Benelux

11. Fuel prices were taken from the IEA World Energy Outlook 2010, New Policies
scenario (Real Terms) and agreed in NSCOGI WG1. Standard CO emission factors
2
were assumed for each fuel type. These are described further in Section
3.4.1below. An exchange rate from $ to € of 0.74 has been used. The CO price
2
was taken from PRIMES,
12. Thermal plants within each country were grouped into categories according to fuel
type, age, must-run obligations, etc. and parameters assigned for each category:
a. Technical characteristics such as start-up costs, minimum stable
generation, and maximum stable generation.
b. Operational flexibility characteristics e.g. minimum run/downtime, ramp
rates etc of each generator group were assigned based on the power plant
type in order to assess secure system operation on the one hand and to
facilitate curtailment of surplus flexible production on the other.
13. Must-run obligations for each of these categories were defined according to their
current market behaviour or known obligations. These were intended to represent
operational constraints forcing the need to run a specific plant outside of the merit
order because of security criteria which could not be modelled in the simulation
tools.
14. The 2020 grid status as shown in the TYNDP 2012, amounting to 77 bn€ of
regional investments until 2020 was taken as fixed with all of its projects assumed
to be in operation (with the exception of the France-Ireland and Great Britain-
Ireland conceptual interconnectors). The TYNDP 2012 [3] was the best available
common denominator for use as a starting position for this study. The TYNDP
2012 projects are illustrated in Figure 3-6 and Figure 3-7.
15. The Base Case Net Transfer Capabilities (NTCs) were based on an assessment of
the capacities of the planned grid in 2020 (consistent with TYNDP 2012). Seasonal
values of transfer capacities between market nodes were used. The NTCs between
market nodes were subsequently adjusted to take account of new interconnection
capacities included in the grid configurations being analysed.
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