Over the past decade, new EU and national energy policies are bringing about significant changes in the national power system and the electricity market. New critical issues and needs are emerging. Spurred by technical, economic, environmental and social drivers, the electricity system has undergone profound changes, including the increasing integration of non-programmable renewable generation and distributed generation into the grid. The project “Evolution of Interconnected Power Systems and Market Integration” aims to analyze the impact of these changes on the national system and, more specifically, on the electricity market.

Last year, the presentation of the National Electricity Strategy was particularly important for the Italian system. As part of this process, RSE supported the Ministry of Economic Development by developing an analysis of the impact of national energy scenarios on the electricity system up to 2030. Simulations of the market and electricity system in 2030 were used to identify market prices, critical issues, interventions and investments needed to achieve the targets set.

The project also assessed the impact on the electricity market of new strategies for offering renewable generation in a context of lower incentives and frequent overgeneration situations.

Other activities related to the analysis of electricity markets focused on possible medium- and long-term developments of the system, its management and the regulatory framework governing its operation. Of particular relevance in this context is RSE’s participation in the Electricity Dispatch Reform project initiated by the Authority (ARERA), which aims at pricing imbalances and introducing nodal prices. In this context, a new imbalance pricing model was developed within the framework of this Annual Implementation Plan.

Still in the context of possible developments in the electricity markets, studies were carried out to assess the contribution of new resources to regulation services: the possible performance of battery-based electrochemical storage systems in providing fast primary frequency regulation was evaluated and a possible strategy for the participation of such systems in the balancing market was proposed.

Finally, the prospects for new types of dispatching services were analyzed. In particular, an iterative procedure was developed to optimize the parameters of innovative frequency adjustments, such as fast primary and synthetic inertia.