Offshore wind plays an ever-increasing role for the global transition to renewable energy. For offshore wind energy to be successful, cost-effective transport of the produced electricity to shore is necessary. The development and operation of the offshore transmission asset is costly and regulated differently across the globe. In most countries, the TSO is responsible for…
Tag: Transmission
Facilitating Transmission Expansion to Support Efficient Decarbonization of the Electricity Sector
Many governments, electric utilities, and large electricity consumers have committed to deep decarbonization of the electricity sector by 2050 or earlier. Over at least the next 30 years, achieving decarbonization targets will require replacing most fossil-fueled generators with zero carbon wind and solar generation along with energy storage to manage intermittency and for balancing more…
A Primer on Transmission Benefits and Cost Allocation
The cost of transmission facilities must be allocated to those within the transmission planning region that benefit from those facilities in a manner that is at least roughly commensurate with estimated benefits.” (FERC, 2010, p. 91) Benefits include reliability, economic and public policy related impacts. Turning the principle into a workable policy is important as…
Comparing Interstate Regulation and Investment in US Gas and Electric Transmission
The interstate electric and natural gas sectors in the United States share some common regulatory elements, although the simpler economics of network expansion in gas pipelines allow the industry to operate on a contract-based framework that would be highly inefficient in electric transmission. The strong incentives for new pipeline development have allowed new gas pipeline…
Offshore grids for renewables: do we need a particular regulatory framework?
Onshore, generators are connected to the transmission grid by TSOs. This regulatory model could simply be extended to offshore (i.e. Germany), but the connection of offshore wind farms to shore is also an opportunity to test alternatives, i.e. the third party model (i.e. the UK) or the generator model (i.e. Sweden). In this paper, we…
All quiet on the western front? Transmission capacity development in the Nordic electricity market
Infrastructure plays an obvious and crucial role in electricity markets. Physical infrastructure must exist for the supply to meet demand in real time. In addition, it accommodates the efficient exchange of cost-efficient production across borders, and can bean important part ofsharingresourcesforreliabilitypurposes.However, in the historically successful Nordic electricity market, the cross-border transmission grid investments are lagging…
Power System Transformation toward Renewables: Investment Scenarios for Germany
We analyze distinctive investment scenarios for the integration of fluctuating renewables in the German power system. Using a combined model for dispatch, transmission, and investment, three different investment options are considered, including gas-fired power plants, pumped hydro storage, and transmission lines. We find that geographically optimized power plant investments dominate in the reference scenarios for…