Powering Europe - European Wind Energy Association

• Wind power support schemes are different in the various
Member States: feed-in tariffs are most common,
followed by green certificates and premium systems.
However, substantial differences exist as to how the
types of support schemes are used by individual Member
States, such as feed-in tariffs, premium mechanisms,
tenders or green certificate schemes.
• In most countries wind power is prioritised in dispatch.
Only in a few countries (Denmark and Finland)
is balancing the responsibility of the generation
plant owners.
• In most countries, wind power is not penalised if the
forecasted production is not fulfilled, but exceptions
do exist.
• Explicit auctioning is the most common way of allocating
cross-border capacities (yearly, monthly,
daily). Day-ahead market couplings exist in the Nordic
countries, between the Netherlands, Belgium
and France, and internally in Italy. It was decided in
June 2010 to establish an intraday market coupling
between the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordic
countries, operational as of November 2010.
4.2 Economic benefits of proper
market rules for wind power
integration in Europe
The mechanisms that governed the power market in
the past have created barriers for the large-scale implementation
of variable renewables in general and
wind power in particular. The ongoing market reform
processes at European level present an opportunity to
develop and introduce market mechanisms and rules
chApTEr 5 electrIcItymarketDeSIgN
that take into account the specific properties of variable
renewables. Different market scenarios have been
analysed in the TradeWind project [TradeWind, 2009]
on their benefits for the integration of wind power. The
scenarios were characterised by two dimensions:
• Time constant of the market (flexibility).
• Geographical size (degree and flexibility of cross
border exchange) of the market area.
Looking ahead to the 2020 and 2030 scenarios
(Chapter 4), the macro-economic benefits of a properly
functioning market in electricity are:
• Intra-day rescheduling of generators and the application
of intra-day wind power forecasting reduces
reserve requirements and results in savings in the
order of €250 million per year.
• Intraday rescheduling of power exchange (international
trade) leads to low system costs and stable
prices, resulting in savings of €1-2 billion per year.
The availability of network infrastructure to assist the
developing internal market is vital. The availability of
sufficient interconnection capacity to enable prices to
converge, results in savings in the order of €1.5 billion
per year for TradeWind’s 2030 scenario.
Wind power curtailment and load shedding would not
exist if the market were well designed. An international
exchange of reserves is not the first market design
priority because the need for reserve power would be
kept low if intra-day rescheduling of power exchange
and by intra-day rescheduling of unit commitment and
dispatch of units were effective. The main benefit of
exchanging reserve power could consist of possible
investments savings in flexible power plants due to reserves
being shared across borders.
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