Frequency Support Markets and Wind Power Integration

Europe’s initiative to reduce the emissions of harmful gases has significantly increased the integration of renewable sources into power networks, particularly wind power. Variable renewable sources pose challenges to sustain the balance between generation and demand. Thus, the need for ancillary services to cope with this problem has increased. In this regard, the integration of larger shares of wind generation would have a clear system benefit when wind generators are able to provide these ancillary services. This would also have implications for electricity markets, enabling these services from wind power plants. This article gives an overview of several European markets for frequency support (FS) services, also referred to as FS markets. It identifies the changes in national regulations of 10 European countries to standardize these services based on the ENTSO-E guidelines. However, most of the countries still use their national service definitions, which presents a problem for researchers to understand the national regulations in relation to the ENTSO-E guidelines. This article provides a classification of the national FS services under the definitions of the ENTSO-E guidelines to facilitate research on this topic. Furthermore, it highlights the main requirements for the market practices that would encourage the participation of wind power generation in the provision of these services. An estimation of the economic benefits for wind producers from the provision of FS services is provided as well to show a possible outcome if changes are not made in national policies.