Wind power and the conditions at a liberalized power market

Wind power is undergoing a rapid development nationally as well as globally and in a number of countries covers an increasing part of the power supply. At the same time an ongoing liberalization of power markets is taking place and to an increasing extent the owners of wind power plants will themselves have to be responsible for trading the power at the spot market and financially handling the balancing.

In the western part of Denmark (Jutland/Funen area), wind-generated power from time to time covers almost 100% of total power consumption. Therefore some examples are chosen from this area to analyse in more detail how well large amounts of wind power in the short-term are handled at the power spot market.

It turns out that there is a tendency that more wind power in the system in the short run leads to relatively lower spot prices, while less wind power implies relatively higher spot prices, although, with the exception of December 2002, in general no strong relationship is found. A stronger relationship is found at the regulating market, where there is a fairly clear tendency that the more wind power produced, the higher is the need for down-regulation, and, correspondingly, the less wind power produced, the higher is the need for up-regulation.

In general for the Jutland/Funen area the average cost of down-regulation is calculated as 1·2 c€/kWh regulated for 2002, while the cost of up-regulation amounts to 0·7 c€/kWh regulated. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.