Electricity market participation of wind farms: the success story of the Spanish pragmatism

Juan Rivier Abbad

Energy Policy, 2010, vol. 38, issue 7, 3174-3179

Abstract: In the last 10 years, more than 15Â GW of wind power (Asociación Empresarial Eólica (Spanish Wind Energy Association), Nota de prensa (Press release) 17 de enero de 2008. http://www.aeeolica.org/doc/NP_080117_Espana_supera_los_15000_MW_eolicos.pdf) have been installed in Spain, of which more than 3.5Â GW in 2007. Furthermore, plans are to reach 20Â GW by 2010 and there are expectations of an installed capacity exceeding 40Â GW by 2020. This article will present the innovative solutions for technical and economical integration that allow to reach such high level wind penetration objectives (the system peaks at around 44Â GW and is almost isolated). It will be described how the regulation has evolved from a pure Feed-in-Tariff to a market+premium option, where technical and economic integration has been a priority. Today, approximately 97% of installed wind capacity accesses the Spanish wholesale electricity market. Market integration has been crucial, sending the correct signals to participants to look for the optimum technical solutions. Technical improvements have come from both wind power producers (fault-ride-through capabilities, visibility and controllability of wind power, power production forecasting, reactive power control) and the system operator (specific control centre dedicated to Renewable Energy Sources (RES), new security analysis tools, gaining technical confidence of wind capabilities).

Keywords: Wind; power; Electricity; markets; Electricity; market; design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00555-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:7:p:3174-3179

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().