From renewable energy domination to new modes of energy consumption, what will future electricity markets look like?

From renewable energy domination to new modes of energy consumption, what will future electricity markets look like?

A public lecture by Pierre Pinson of the Danish Technical University (DTU).

The increased penetration of renewable energy generation in power systems and electricity markets, as well as the pursuit for a more flexible and proactive demand side, has induced a number of challenges, from downward pressure on energy prices to worries about investment in necessary capacity for instance.

More generally, the current design of electricity and ancillary service markets do not recognize and embrace the very nature of renewable energy generation from e.g. wind and solar power installations, with its variability and limited predictability. Same goes for the characteristics of electric demand, for instance due to its conditional dynamic elasticity. The needs to revisit such market design, as well as its potential implications, will be discussed. Examples will include concepts related to probabilistic offers (therefore revealing and accepting generation uncertainty), wind offering ancillary services, time and space coordination of markets, etc. We will insist on the necessity to bridge the gap between research on toy models and real-world large and complex systems, then introducing ongoing initiatives for relevant parties to work on a common EU dataset for renewables in electricity markets.

Pierre Pinson is a Professor at the Centre for Electric Power and Energy (CEE) of the Technical university of Denmark (DTU, Dept. of Electrical Engineering), also heading a group focusing on Energy Analytics & Markets. He holds a M.Sc. In Applied Mathematics from INSA Toulouse and a Ph.D. In Energy Engineering from Ecole de Mines de Paris (France). He acts as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, International Journal of Forecasting and Wind Energy. His main research interests are centered around the proposal and application of mathematical methods for electricity markets and power systems operations, including forecasting. He has published extensively in some of the leading journals in Meteorology, Power Systems Engineering, Statistics and Operations Research. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford (Mathematical Institute) and the University of Washington in Seattle (Dpt. of Statistics), as well as a scientist at the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).