Abstract
Recently, the European Commission passed the Guideline on Electricity Balancing to standardize future reserve products in European electricity markets. Strict regulatory requirements are imposed on ramping behavior that must be adhered to, which brings ramping constraints into renewed focus. In a literature review, we find that prevalent ramping constraint formulations cannot guarantee that those regulatory requirements are fully satisfied. Since reserve activation in relation to ramping constraints is not discussed in literature, we aim to fill this research gap with a focus on the impact of reserve activation on ramping feasibility, availability of reserve, and thereby induced imbalances. We argue for the use of a simple, yet consequential and more robust, extended version of ramping constraints to account for intertemporal dependencies of reserve in general and to satisfy regulatory requirements in particular. Prevalent formulations significantly overestimate available reserve compared to the robust formulation. Worst-case bounds on the overestimation factor are provided for common operating modes. Computational experiments on standard benchmark sets confirm that the prevalent formulation overestimates reserve in realistic scenarios. Reserve activations are simulated from German data in a comprehensive ex-post analysis to identify reserve overestimation as a hitherto neglected source of imbalances and to quantify its extent.
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Notes
Many papers consider positive reserve only. In those papers, the notation for reserve is \(r_{t}\), which is the same as \(r_{t}^{+}\) in this paper. Sometimes the maximum power available of the power plant is denoted as \(\overline{y}_{t}\), s.t. \(\overline{y}_{t}=y_{t}+r_{t}\).
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This work was supported by the European Union and the Free State of Saxony under SAB-Nr. 100331224.
Appendices
Derivation of bounds on reserve overestimation
Let \(\Delta_{t}=y_{t}-y_{t-1}\) denote the change in power output. For prevalent ramping constraints (13)–(14),
and for robust ramping constraints (16)–(17),
1.1 Case A—constant power
With constant power output \(\Delta_{t}=0\), \(r_{t}^{+}=r_{t-1}^{+}\), and \(r_{t}^{-}=r_{t-1}^{-}\), the following inequalities hold. For prevalent ramping constraints (24)–(25),
which gives an upper bound on total reserve of
For robust ramping constraints (26)–(27),
s.t.
To determine the factor of reserve overestimation, compare the bound on total reserve of prevalent ramping constraints (30) to that of robust ramping constraints (33). In the worst-case of constant power output, prevalent ramping constraints overestimate total available reserve by a factor of
compared to robust ramping constraints. For symmetric ramping rate limits \(V=\overline{V}=\underline{V}\), the bound on the overestimation factor decreases to \(2V/V=2\).
1.2 Case B—ramping up or down
Apply the same logic as before, assume the plant ramps down with the maximum ramp rate \(\Delta_{t}=-\underline{V}\), and again \(r_{t}^{+}=r_{t-1}^{+}\) as well as \(r_{t}^{-}=r_{t-1}^{-}\). Then, the prevalent formulation yields
and the robust formulation
With (35)–(36), only positive reserve can be provided, whereas with (37)–(38), neither positive nor negative reserve can be provided. Therefore, in the ramp-down case, overestimation of positive reserve is theoretically unbounded for the prevalent formulation. Equally, overestimation of negative reserve is unbounded in the ramp-up case. It is, of course, bounded by minimum and maximum power output levels that will be reached eventually.
1.3 Case C—oscillating power output
For example, consider alternating ramp-up and ramp-down phases with \(\Delta_{t-1}=-\underline{V}\), \(\Delta_{t}=\overline{V}\), and \(\Delta_{t+1}=\Delta_{t-1}=-\underline{V}\). For prevalent ramping constraints, for \(t\)
and in \(t-1\)
For robust ramping constraints, for \(t\)
and for \(t+1\) by substituting \(\Delta_{t+1}=\Delta_{t-1}\), \(r_{t+1}^{+}=r_{t-1}^{+}\), and \(r_{t+1}^{-}=r_{t-1}^{-}\),
Note that constraints (41) and (42) are identical.
From prevalent ramping constraints (39)–(40) follows
whereas for robust ramping constraints (41)–(42),
This time, even for the asymmetrical case \(\overline{V}\neq\underline{V}\), overestimation is bounded by a factor of two. Interestingly, with robust constraints (41)–(42), the same amount of reserve can be allocated as with prevalent constraints (39)–(40) but only for a single period, e.g. \(r_{t}^{-}=\overline{V}+\underline{V}\). For the robust formulation, this comes at the expense of positive reserve in adjoining periods, s.t. \(r_{t-1}^{+}=r_{t+1}^{+}=0\), whereas with the prevalent formulation positive reserve in adjoining periods is unaffected, s.t. \(r_{t-1}^{+},r_{t+1}^{+}\leq\overline{V}+\underline{V}\).
Mathematical model for the computational study
The model with robust ramping constraints is given as the maximization of
subject to
For the prevalent formulation, robust ramping constraints (50)–(51) are replaced by
For fixed reserve requirements, we additionally introduce
where \(R_{t}^{+}\) and \(R_{t}^{-}\) are the reserve requirements given in the IEEE benchmark dataset (Knueven et al. 2020; Krall et al. 2012; Barrows et al. 2019).
List of symbols
Indices
- \(i\) :
-
Plant id
- \(j\) :
-
Output level
- \(t\) :
-
Time period
Parameters
- \(C_{i}^{\mathrm{u}}\) :
-
Start-up costs of plant \(i\)
- \(C_{i}^{\mathrm{v}}\) :
-
Operating costs at the minimum power output level of plant \(i\)
- \(C_{ij}^{\mathrm{v}}\) :
-
Marginal costs of power output of plant \(i\) at output level \(j\)
- \(C_{i}^{\mathrm{w}}\) :
-
Shut-down costs of plant \(i\)
- \(\overline{P}_{i}\) :
-
Maximum power output of plant \(i\)
- \(\underline{P}_{i}\) :
-
Minimum power output of plant \(i\)
- \(\overline{P}_{ij}\) :
-
Maximum power output of plant \(i\) at output level \(j\)
- \(P_{t}^{\mathrm{x}}\) :
-
Wholesale price in period \(t\)
- \(P_{t}^{-}\) :
-
Negative reserve price in period \(t\)
- \(P_{t}^{+}\) :
-
Positive reserve price in period \(t\)
- \(R_{i0}^{-}\) :
-
Initial negative reserve of plant \(i\) in period 0
- \(R_{t}^{-}\) :
-
Exogenous negative reserve requirement in period \(t\)
- \(R_{i0}^{+}\) :
-
Initial positive reserve of plant \(i\) in period 0
- \(R_{t}^{+}\) :
-
Exogenous positive reserve requirement in period \(t\)
- \(\overline{U}_{i}\) :
-
Start-up rate of plant \(i\)
- \(\overline{V}_{i}\) :
-
Maximum ramp-up rate of plant \(i\)
- \(\underline{V}_{i}\) :
-
Maximum ramp-down rate of plant \(i\)
- \(V_{i}\) :
-
Initial commitment status of plant \(i\)
- \(\underline{W}_{i}\) :
-
Shut-down rate of plant \(i\)
- \(X_{t}\) :
-
Power delivery obligation in period \(t\)
- \(Y_{i0}\) :
-
Initial power output of plant \(i\) in period 0
Sets
- \(\mathcal{I}\) :
-
Set of power plants
- \(\mathcal{J}_{i}\) :
-
Set of output levels of plant \(i\)
- \(\mathcal{T}\) :
-
Set of time periods
Variables
- \(r_{it}^{-}\) :
-
Negative reserve of plant \(i\) in period \(t\)
- \(r_{it}^{+}\) :
-
Positive reserve of plant \(i\) in period \(t\)
- \(u_{it}\) :
-
Start-up status of plant \(i\) in period \(t\)
- \(v_{it}\) :
-
Commitment status of plant \(i\) in period \(t\)
- \(w_{it}\) :
-
Shut-down status of plant \(i\) in period \(t\)
- \(x_{t}\) :
-
Wholesale market bid size in period \(t\)
- \(y_{it}\) :
-
Power output of plant \(i\) in period \(t\)
List of abbreviations
- aFRR:
-
Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserves
- BSP:
-
Balancing Service Provider
- CPP:
-
Conventional Power Plant
- mFRR:
-
Manual Frequency Restoration Reserves
- TSO:
-
Transmission System Operator
- UCP:
-
Unit Commitment Problem
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Kuttner, L., Scheffler, M., Buscher, U. et al. Ramping constraint formulations under consideration of reserve activation in Unit Commitment Problems. Z Energiewirtsch 45, 247–270 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12398-021-00309-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12398-021-00309-w