Dynamic pricing of retail electricity, as opposed to the widely applied average pricing, has often been proposed to enhance economic efficiency through demand response. The development of variable production from renewable energies and expectations about the installation of heat pumps and electric vehicles has now reinforced interest in flexible demand and dynamic pricing. With a roll‐out of smart metering one important technical hurdle is going to be cleared, and dynamic retail pricing may soon become an eligible option for many households. We quantify the potential incentives to adopt new pricing schemes using exemplary Danish data. Until now, limited activity of household consumers on retail markets indicates that switching supplier or contract is perceived costly. We apply the concept of switching costs to explain this hesitant behavior, and use it to estimate a threshold level based on recent observations in the Danish market. We calculate potential savings from dynamic pricing and show how the choice of electricity taxation technique may hamper or enhance potential benefits. In the light of switching costs, our results suggest that the combination of smart meter roll‐out and dynamic pricing offerings might be insufficient to convince the majority of households to switch contracts and become active in response to prices, unless they hold a substantial flexibility potential. Dynamic taxation, even if applied to parts of the levies, could contribute significantly to inducing flexible consumption. WIREs Energy Environ 2018, 7:e270. doi: 10.1002/wene270. This article is categorized under: Energy Infrastructure > Economics and Policy Energy Systems Economics > Economics and Policy Energy Policy and Planning > Economics and Policy

The number of regional and national power systems with a high share of wind and solar power in the world is quickly increasing. The background for this development is improved technology, decreasing costs, and increased concern regarding environmental problems of competing technologies such as fossil fuels. For the future there are large possibilities for increasing the renewable electricity share. However, variable renewable power production has to be balanced. Demand side flexibility offers an interesting approach to the balancing issues. The aim of this paper is to compare flexibility potentials and how they were estimated in seven Northern European countries in order to compare general challenges and results as well as the connection between used method and results. The total flexibility is estimated to 12-23GW in a system with a total peak load of 77 GW.

While the majority of electricity in the Nordic and Baltic countries is traded at the day-ahead market, producers and consumers can use the intraday market to adjust their production commitments according to updated forecasts closer to the time of delivery. This reduces the need for balancing, particularly important for VRE producers, but it also means that the price formation at intraday market can change optimal bidding strategy in the day-ahead market. Through econometric modelling of intraday price premiums, this paper investigates intraday price asymmetries, which potentially can lead to strategic bidding. The intraday market is per definition symmetric, as prices for power sales always correspond to prices for power purchases, however, we find that this symmetry is not reflected in the price structure in regards to the total load adjustment needs.

Applying a partial equilibrium model of the electricity market we analyse effects of exposing household electricity customers to retail products with variable pricing. Both short-term and long-term effects of exposing customers to hourly spot market prices and a simpler rebate scheme are analysed under scenarios with large shares of wind power in a Danish case study. Our results indicate strategies that could be favourable in ensuring high adoption of products and efficient response by households. We find that simple pricing schemes, though economically less efficient, could become important in an early phase to initialise the development of household demand response. At a later point, when long-term dynamics take effect, a larger effort should be made to shift consumers onto real-time rates, and an increased focus on overall adoption of variable pricing will be required. Another finding is that demand response under variable pricing makes wind power more valuable. These gains in value reduce the need for support, and could be redistributed in further support of demand response.

In order to achieve a better understanding of the system value of residential demand response, we study the potential impact of flexible demand on the costs of system reserves in a fossil-free electricity supply. Comparing these costs with traditional means of regulation our analysis aims to contribute to determining the least-cost options for regulation in a fossil-free power system. We extend an existing energy system model with demand response and reserve modelling and analyse the impact for the case of Denmark in 2035 to reflect a system based on renewable resources for electricity and heating.

Aggregators are expected to play an important role in making households provide flexibility to the electricity system. We investigate the business case of aggregators offering a demand response product in a competitive retail market, then directly accessing their cus-tomers’ flexibility through remotely controlled demand response devices and marketing it on the electricity markets. As the value of flexibility largely relies on price variations, we use a stochastic electricity price model, which we combine with a linear optimisation program and a cash-flow model to determine expected operating gross margins and their probability distributions. We find that, for a case of Danish residential customers with optimistic assumptions on the available flexibility in terms of flexible volumes and load-shift time horizons, the benefits may be in the range of current investment cost for automation equipment. Furthermore, a Value-at-Risk analysis shows that income expectations are rather stable with more upside than downside potential. With foreseeable cost reductions for smart devices the aggregator business case might soon become attractive, particularly in markets with high shares of renewable production.

Present trends in the development of electricity systems are expected to generate a growing need for flexibility in decentralised resources, including demand response. In order to enable decentralised actors to create value, the organisation of markets and incentives should incorporate these new participants. The roll-out of smart metering to electricity consumers is an important precondition to establishing a flexible demand side and will provide essential information flows. On the basis of current incentive structures and related risks, however, the pass-through of information and value from wholesale market participants to the demand side is mostly infeasible, resulting in flexibility tasks being aggregated and delegated to balancing responsible wholesale traders. This analysis focuses on whether current incentives and roles are appropriate and where the design could be improved to establish a flexible demand side with a particular focus on the Danish case. Design-related barriers are identified that affect expected value, associated risks, and the distribution of responsibilities. This serves as a basis to define policy options in the context of Nordic electricity markets.

The European Energy Exchange (EEX) day ahead spot market for electricity in Germany shows significant variations in prices between peak and off-peak hours. Being able to shift electricity production from off-peak hours to peak hours improves the profit from CHP-plant operation significantly. Installing a big thermal store at a CHP-plant makes it possible to shift production of electricity and heat to hours where electricity prices are highest especially on days with low heat demand. Consequently, these conditions will have to influence the design of new CHP-plants. In this paper, the optimal size of a CHP-plant with thermal store under German spot market conditions is analyzed. As an example the possibility to install small size CHP-plant instead of only boilers at a Stadtwerke delivering 30,000 MW h-heat for district heating per year is examined using the software energyPRO. It is shown that, given the economic and technical assumptions made, a CHP-plant of 4 MW-el with a thermal store participating in the spot market will be the most feasible plant to build. A sensitivity analysis shows to which extent the optimal solution will vary by changing the key economic assumptions.

Flexibel und schnell einsetzbare Speicher werden in einem liberalisierten Gasmarkt zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnen. Die Trianel hat sich daher zusammen mit weiteren Partnern zur Errichtung einer Gaskavernenanlage in Epe entschieden. Als das Haupteinsatzgebiet einer Kavernenspeicheranlage wird traditionell die Spitzenlastbegrenzung (engl.“peak-shaving”) angesehen. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt demgegenüber auf, wie eine solche Anlage wirtschaftlich sinnvoll zur Abbildung einer Vollversorgung eingesetzt werden kann.

After a general discussion of model studies in photosynthesis research, three recently developed model systems are described. The current status of covalently linked chlorophyll pairs as models for P700 and P865 is first briefly reviewed. Mg-tris(pyrochlorophyllide)1,1,1-tris(hydroxymethyl) ethane triester in its folded configuration is then discussed as a rudimentary antenna-photoreaction center model. Finally, self-assembled chlorophyll systems that contain a mixture of monomeric, oligomeric and special pair chlorophyll are shown to have fluorescence emission characteristics that resemble those of intact Tribonema aequale at room temperature in that both show fluorescence emission at 675 and 695 nm. In the self-assembled systems the wavelength of the emitted fluorescence depends on the wavelength of excitation, arguing that energy transfer between different chlorophyll species in these systems may be more complex than previously suspected.

(24/12/2018) The residential electricity sector in Denmark: A description of current conditions We provide an overview of the current conditions and framework for residential electricity consumption in Denmark. This includes a general overview of the sector, the retail market and the regulatory framework. We describe the regulations currently in place and changes which have been decided for the coming years. The information and data described are all publicly available, though much of it only in Danish language. This description is to our knowledge one of the first comprehensive overviews of the Danish residential sector in English language. We have translated a number of terms commonly used in the area, which are listed in the Glossary towards the end of the report. We also attach a list and description of the major sources of information and data that can be obtained and downloaded for analysis of the Danish residential electricity sector.

We use a long-term electricity market equilibrium model to assess the impact of variable price products for household electricity customers. The analysed product structures resemble a rebate provided to customers within a field experiment in Southern Denmark. The developed model provides a clearer picture of what to expect from household demand response under spot pricing schemes as compared and simplified product schemes; it also prepares for interpreting the field experiment results. Using preliminary assumptions we estimate both short-term and long-term welfare effects of a shift of customers to an ideal spot pricing scheme and to the simplified rebate product

Increased Integration of the Nordic and German Electricity Systems Summary of Findings Modelling and Assessment of Economic and Climate Eff ects of Enhanced Electrical Interconnection and the Additional Deployment of Renewable Energies Hethey, János; Kofoed-Wiuff, Anders; Bornak, Lars Pauli ; Lindboe, Hans Henrik; Sawatzki, Simon ; Vestarchi, Marievi ; Skytte, Klaus; Katz, Jonas; Egerer, Jonas ; Zerrahn, Alexander Total number of authors: 11