Overview

The Provision of ancillary services in future lower-carbon UK electricity system project was led by Professor Goran Strbac. It was overseen by Dr Anes Dallagi of the EDF Energy R&D UK Centre. The work team was composed of Dr Fei Teng and Dr Marko Aunedi.

The project was part of the EDF SparkFund, a collaboration between Energy Futures Lab and EDF Energy R&D UK Centre. This initiative enabled short-term exploratory projects in areas of common interest to both. The expectation from these precursor projects is that they could lead to longer-term research projects.

The project was focussed on ancillary services, those needed to balance the system in a second-by-second basis. The team investigated the challenges facing these services and the potential solutions from flexible technologies. The work used the scenarios outlined in Energy UK's Pathways for the GB Electricity Sector to 2030 report [PDF].

Objectives

The project aimed to:

• Assess the challenges associated with the provision of ancillary services under two of the scenarios outlined in Energy UK's Pathways for the GB Electricity Sector to 2030 report
• Analyse the potential impacts of alternative flexible technologies on the provision of these ancillary service

Results

The team were able to:

• Calculate the increase in cost and carbon emission driven by the provision of reserve and response services under the selected scenarios
• Demonstrate the impact of alternative flexible technologies such as interconnection, flexible generation, storage and demand side response on the provision of ancillary services
• Quantify the economic and environmental benefits of these alternative flexible technologies