Evaluation of the influence of increasing time granularity in the balanced electricity market

With the increase of variable renewable energy (VRE) which can cause great volatility and uncertainty, the power system operation and settlement will face fundamental challenges. Based on this background, we analyze high temporal resolution datasets from 66 load zones in the United States to evaluate the impact of increasing time granularity on balanced electricity market settlement. By analyzing the post-balance market real-time power imbalance requirement and operation cost, we can find that the up-regulation and down-regulation requirements to tackle real-time power imbalance are different at different time granularities, and the higher the time granularity, the real-time power imbalance quantities are smaller and vice versa, considering the electricity market balancing cost is proportional to the real-time power imbalance, that is increasing time granularity can reduce the cost of the balance electricity market. This paper for the first time provides quantitative evidence to support the reform of the balancing electricity market by increasing time granularity.