RES.Trade: An Open-Access Simulator to Assess the Impact of Different Designs on Balancing Electricity Markets

The 2050 global ambition for a carbon-neutral society is increasing the penetration of the most competitive variable renewable technologies, onshore wind and solar PV. These technologies are known for their near-zero marginal costs but highly variable time-dependent generation. Power systems with major penetrations of variable generation need high balancing flexibility to guarantee their stability by maintaining the equilibrium between demand and supply. This work presents the open-access Multi-agent Trading of Renewable Energy Sources (RES.Trade) system, which includes different market designs of the imbalance settlement and the secondary and tertiary reserves. A new imbalance settlement is also proposed in this work. The main features of RES.Trade are demonstrated using two case studies and projected 2030 scenarios: the first analysed four imbalance settlement mechanisms in Portugal, achieving a 43% reduction in penalties using the new method; the second case study assesses the impact of five procurement mechanisms of secondary power reserves in the Spanish power system, resulting in a cost reduction by 34% in the case of dynamic reserves.