Mathematical models and methods for analysis of distributed power generation on market conditions

The liberalisation of electricity markets around the world which has taken place in recent years – and is still ongoing – has had several consequences for the various players in the markets affected. Typically, the tasks of production, transmission, and distribution of electricity which were often handled by socalled vertically integrated monopolies have been separated to varying degrees and are in liberalised systems handled by different players. In the Nordic system, electricity is traded as a commodity on a day-ahead spot market where suppliers and consumers submit their bids for the following day and a common hourly electricity spot price is found. Intra-day markets for balancing power also exist. The raison d’etre for this type of market is that although supply and demand are balanced on a day-ahead basis, actual demand is impossible to forecast with complete accuracy. Thus on the day of operation actual demand and planned supply never match precisely. The system operator must then procure so-called balancing power in the intra-day market to maintain the physical balance of the system at all times. The present thesis considers the effects of large amounts of distributed electricity generation in a power system subject to a liberalised market. In particular, the Danish electricity system is analysed in terms of four different focus topics which are considered in the six research papers presented and commented on in the thesis. The analyses range from planning the operation and/or bidding of single-technology units such as wind power turbines and local combined heat and power plants to analyses from a system point of view such as the interaction between the natural gas, district heating, and electricity systems, and the system operator dilemma of procuring reserve power well in advance as opposed to purchasing the needed volumes in the intra-day balancing market. The thesis itself provides an introduction to the Nordic power system and market with emphasis on the Danish situation. After presenting a few classic topics in power system operation, the situation post-liberalisation of the electricity markets is analysed and a literature review is given of the major topics of the thesis, setting the contributions of the thesis into perspective of previous work on related topics. Subsequently, the papers included in the thesis are summarised and commented upon and the main contributions are listed, before the thesis is concluded upon.