Regional, multi-national electricity markets

Abstract

During the last decade competitive market based solutions for trading of electricity have been introduced around the world. Most of these markets have been based on local, national solutions, but in some areas regional, multi-national solutions have been developed. An introduction to the Nordic regional electricity market, its development, structure, and governance will be presented. The development of generation reserves will also be explained and how the system operators coordinate their efforts to maintain a reliable power supply in a power system with diminishing gap between installed generation capacity and peak load. The paper will also highlight how regional cooperation can maintain the security of supply by optimizing use of existing infrastructure and by developing new coordinated protection schemes that allows the system operators to increase transmission limits with small investment costs. The paper will give an overview of some general experiences with electricity market developments, with special focus on the need for harmonization between nations when regional markets are developed and the benefits of regional market solutions