Preventing internal congestion in an integrated European balancing activation optimization

Abstract

New common platforms for optimization of balancing energy activation will facilitate cross-border exchange and integrate the fragmented European balancing markets. Having a zonal market structure, these platforms will optimize balancing actions as if intra-zonal transmission constraints did not exists, leaving it to each Transmission System Operator (TSO) to manage internal congestion caused by balancing energy activations. This paper describes a new method to pre-filter balancing bids likely to cause internal congestion due to their location. Furthermore, the complementary concept of exchange domains has been developed to prevent congested and infeasible balancing situations. A numerical example illustrates both the effectiveness and limitations of each method.