Load Flexibility Supply via Participation in the Italian Balancing Market: Preliminary Economic Evaluations

The increasing generation share from non-programmable renewable energy sources increases the need for resources for Ancillary Service (AS) supply, and also the need for higher performance from them, e.g. higher ramp rates and activation speed. A possible solution to collect new (and performing) resources, especially for load-frequency regulation, is to open the Ancillary Service Market (ASM) to suppliers other than the traditional ones, i.e., the large conventional power plants. In particular, the flexibility of load units can be exploited. In this paper, Demand Response (DR) based on load reduction offered as a balancing service in the Italian ASM is considered, with reference to a constant absorption profile. Simulations show that, by assuming fixed-price offers and a single activation of the DR service per day, annual net revenues can reach up to some per cent of the load energy bill; similar results can also be achieved by using, as offer prices, averages of the historical ASM accepted prices or samples from their statistical distribution.