Shaping and Integrating Future Electricity Markets with A High Penetration of Renewable Generation and Flexible Resources

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to introduce a Special Issue of Energies on "Shaping and integrating future electricity markets with a high penetration of renewable generation and flexible resources", and to invite interested authors to upload original contributions on related topics.

Electricity markets are an area of major changes mainly driven by their integration into multi-zone markets and by the entry of new market actors with resources that have different/unique technical and operational characteristics.

On one hand, the European electricity market is currently undergoing a long adaptation phase of a Europe-wide harmonization of processes, products and rules to facilitate trade and balancing activities with the ultimate goal of minimizing the costs imposed on final consumers. The spot (day-ahead, intra-day) markets are gradually integrating into multi-zone marketplaces, whereas the balancing and ancillary services markets are one step behind in the integration process. In this respect, specific challenges arise from the prospective operation of market platforms (e.g. PICASSO, MARI, TERRE) that will be used to apply imbalance netting and for the exchange of balancing energy between neighboring control areas, in order to minimize the balancing costs. Additionally, challenges arise from the potential sharing of reserves and the exchange of balancing capacity across a wide geographical region. Moreover, the calculation of the market value of cross-zonal capacity constitutes a rising need when energy/balancing energy is exchanged through interconnections.

At the same time, the market structure is gradually transformed from a market that is heavily dominated by conventional resources to a market with the widespread diffusion of renewable generation, a significant presence of storage facilities including pumped-storage hydros, batteries and increasing fleets of electric vehicles, and demand response resources acting as virtual generation. The emergence of new types of resources necessitates the incorporation of certain regulatory provisions and participation rules, along with new balancing/flexibility products, in order these resources to be scheduled efficiently and to attain economic viability. Several products that can lead to increased flexibility in the power system and the economic viability of such resources include flexible ramping capacity in short-term markets and capacity/flexibility services in the long-term capacity markets.

Dealing with the above new challenges while being able to create innovative and prosperous business ideas is a key to survival following the advent of future electricity markets. The diversity of new players (e.g., aggregators) and the disruption caused by new technologies to existing business models can only be evaluated with adequate simulation tools and optimization models.

Contributions to this Special Issue are expected to address the most advanced topics referring to the challenges of future electricity markets in view of large-scale renewable penetration and flexible resources. The main topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

• electricity market integration
• shaping the balancing market with new balancing capacity and balancing energy products
• imbalance netting and sharing of reserves across multi-zone systems
• exchange of balancing capacity and balancing energy between neighboring control areas
• forming optimization models to exchange balancing services
• short-term power system operation under uncertainties
• short-term scheduling and dispatch under forecast errors by non-dispatchable resources
• determination of reserve needs under large-scale renewable penetration
• smooth integration of massive renewable energy sources, storage resources, electric vehicles and demand response resources in the spot and balancing electricity markets
• responding to the imminent and exponentially rising need for flexibility services to be provided by flexible resources
• electricity market simulation considering flexible resources
• computational intelligence to cope with complex models in future electricity markets
• economic viability of flexible resources entering the electricity markets
• balancing energy price discovery issues

Dr. Pandelis Biskas
Dr. Dimitris Chatzigiannis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• electricity market integration 
• imbalance netting 
• exchange of balancing capacity 
• sharing of reserves 
• exchange of balancing energy 
• cross-zonal capacity value 
• flexibility services 
• flexible resources 
• economic viability 
• price discovery