Also the easter kraftwerk korneuburg acts as a cold reserve for the german electricity grid. © bwag. License: cc by-sa 3.0 / at
Due to energy market liberalization, germany has a stream market split between network operation and electricity market
In the past, the german electricity network was comparatively simple. On the one hand, the power generation was concentrated in a few coarse power plants and on the customer side were in addition to industrial users who partly have their own power plant capacity, a rough number comparatively small consumer distributed decentralized over the whole republic.
With the liberalization of the energy market in the 1990s, the separation of network operation and electricity trading started a previously unknown for electricity market. From formerly more or less integrated power companies, network operators and electricity handler developed. In the case of electricity handlers, more or less adventurous sales forms on the market, which could not prevail in numerous traps and have disappeared from the market again.
At 90 percent of the utilities, the network operation and the electricity trading are only organisationally separated, but ultimately owned by the same property, which in practice leads, however, that their own electricity trade must not be made better than a third-party handler and therefore information on network utilization not exclusively passed on to its own sales, even if this could be meaningful.
Follow the energy transition
When the energy market was liberalized within the eu, the german energy transition was only available in a few more or less fun kops, but politics have not arrived for a long time.
The german energy transition leads to a shift in power generation to northern and eastern germany, remaining electricity requirements in the south and west. The lines needed for compensation often fails to engage the residents affected by the routes. And the electricity borse ames that electricity in germany is always available at any time.
Pictorially, the electricity bases ame that germany is a coarse copper plate and forms an entire german electricity price. For the electricity price of private end customers, the power supply costs at its respective location are now much more important. For the power supply, the respective network operator is responsible.
There are several different reserves against a nationwide blackout
In the energy industry act, there are now four different types of power plant reserves, which can use the transmission system operators to prevent a power failure. Thus, the network reserve is formed year for year in the winter half-year to provide power plant capacity for special redispatch interventions of the transfer network operator, which go beyond the operating redispatch. This is funding that the power requirement in winter is usually particularly high.
Although a lot of electricity is produced in the wind farms in the german north during the wind farms, the due to netzeng fittings in the suden, where the need is needed, can not be used. The transmission system operators would then often have to switch off power plants in the north and boost systems in the suden with appropriate performance to relieve the power grid and to use demand.
Since the nuclear phase-out by 2022 predominantly in sudsutschland further power plant capacity to be taken from the market, a temporary strategic reserve capacity was developed. In order for the german electricity grid in connection with the restructuring of nuclear power plants to renewable not collapsing, a strategic reserve may now be used after approval by the eu commission.
The eu aid permission is valid for up to 2.000 mw preserved reservation. It comprises three periods of two years each in the period from 2019 to 2025. The first phase should be on the 1. Start october 2019. The capacities of the strategic reserve have to be openly advertised to ensure competition and limit the costs.
Due to this approach, this maaking is also consistent with the eu aid rules. It is not invested in the long run, but should be reflected again if the electricity market is redesigned so that security of supply is well-guaranteed. The strategic reserve should always be used when, due to unpredictable incidents, supply and demand with the funds available in the network are not used to cover the strategic reserve.
Capacity reserve with problems
In addition, the eu commission also approved the so-called capacity reserve. For the capacity reserve, technically suitable plants are in question. It can therefore participate in the tender on the one hand power plants and providers of regular loads, ie operators who can take their systems from the network if required.
The invitation to tender is carried out by the transfer system operators who then take the selected investments. The facilities of the capacity reserve is prohibited simultaneous participation in the regulatory coarse trade market. This is to ensure that the capacity reserve is also available when needed.
In practice, the conditions in the regulated electricity market drove to quite curious situations. So in bavarian irsching at ingolstadt two modern, comparatively clean gas power plants, which could provide electricity exactly if pv and wind do not supply.
The two gas power plants fall under the so-called power reserve regulation and are used only when their power is needed. However, they are too rarely used in practice and are therefore unprofitable for operators. More profitable are uniper gas-power plants for the power plant operator, which he creates and operates on behalf of the network operator.
Uniper has participated in a tender of tenne’s transfer network operator and will build the new gas power plant with a capacity of 300 megawatts and operate on behalf of tennet from october 2022. The new power plant is called "special network-technical equipment" and should "be" in special emergency situations as security buffers in the power supply ".
That you use the same location for the new gas power plant, on which two plants are already available, offers the advantage that you can access an existing network connection and no costly new routes to make challenge the objection of the residents. Another reserve is the four-year so-called safety readiness of eight lignite-block. It was ultimately created to provide their operators a kind of scrapping program at the expense of electricity consumers.