Nordic perspective on System Integrity Protection Schemes in relation to capacity allocation

The urgent need to address climate change prompts societies worldwide to adopt carbon neutral energy and electrification. To facilitate this, a range of technologies and policies will be needed. Alternatives to traditional power grid reinforcement, such as grid-enhancing technologies and system automation, are particularly attractive due to their potentially low cost and fast deployment time. One alternative is System Integrity Protection Schemes (SIPS) - automatic and curative remedial actions (RAs) which can boost grid transfer capacities without compromising with reliability since they can act faster than manual control. The use of SIPS however is scattered, with limited coordination between countries, and the full potential of using SIPS for capacity enhancement is not yet realized. The aim of this paper is to provide a case study and comparison of SIPS in the Nordic countries, particularly in relation to capacity allocation. It also seeks to harmonize terminology relating to ancillary services, RAs, and SIPS. Finally, it examines and compares the inclusion of RAs and SIPS in different Capacity Calculation Methodologies (CCMs). In both main EU CCMs - Net Transfer Capacity (NTC) and Flow-Based (FB) - RAs play a pronounced role. The paper is based on a survey and interviews with Nordic stakeholders, along with a literature review and analysis of public data. The results indicate a large variation in SIPS use across the Nordics. Regarding terminology, we suggest that SIPS is a subcategory of RAs which overlaps with ancillary services. Concerning CCMs, NTC is unable to fully represent capacity constraints in meshed AC systems, which in turn hinders systematic capacity enhancement using RAs. FB on the other hand explicitly includes RAs in the capacity domain. A lower bound for the economic value of RAs can be calculated, amounting to 11.5 million EUR in the Nordics in Nov and Dec 2024.