Assessing the benefits of a provision of system services by distributed generation

Christoph Weber and Philip Vogel

International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 2008, vol. 29, issue 1/2, 162-180

Abstract: Distributed Generation (DG) units are said to have the potential to become an integral part of the future power systems. Today, DG units are characterised by high specific investment costs, but nevertheless are politically promoted because of their high degree of energy efficiency and their capability of reducing the current dependency on fossil fuels. However, at longer term DG units have to become competitive if they want to participate in a fully liberalised energy market. Against this background, DG units have some valuable features that are not considered nowadays. These features are mostly based on the large flexibility of an electricity system with decentralised energy production and might help to master future challenges in power markets, e.g. the increasing degree of stochasticity in the power system through the introduction of wind power turbines on a large scale. This paper highlights the possibilities for DG units to use a local energy generation management and to participate on the market for balancing power. External benefits to the grid are also discussed, but only briefly. The potential of these benefits is assessed and quantified for a small Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant using historical and forecasted data for German electricity prices.

Keywords: distributed generation; energy management; system services; power systems; liberalised energy markets; electricity generation; wind power; wind energy; wind turbines; Germany; combined heat and power; CHP. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=16347 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:ids:ijgeni:v:29:y:2008:i:1/2:p:162-180

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Global Energy Issues from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().