Adequacy

The growth in the number of renewable energy units connected to distribution systems across Europe and, the connection of large offshore wind farms, also creates new challenges for operational grid management, particularly through increased volatility of energy flows on our network.

Responses

Maintaining security of the grid with respect to balancing at reasonable costs for the society relies on a mix of measures. These involve improving the cooperation for grid control at both national and international levels, enhancing the quality of forecasts (consumption, offshore, etc.), as well as ensuring a market design that incentivizes the Balancing Responsible Parties to manage their portfolio balance, whilst at the same time offering them the market arrangements which allow them to trade their imbalances as close as possible to real-time (e.g. intraday markets). In addition, market reforms have to be implemented that unlock as much flexibility as possible and that can be called upon in real-time to keep the grid balanced at the least cost. The latter market reforms are aiming to open the balancing markets to all technologies and all players, irrespective of the voltage level they are connected to.

As an illustration of the aforementioned measure, in the course of 2020 in Belgium, ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM moved from monthly procurement of mFRR (manual frequency restoration reserve) and weekly procurement of aFRR (automatic frequency restoration reserve) to a daily procurement of both reserves which, together with a shortening of the capacity contracting time unit to four hours, lowers the entry barrier for the reserve market and allows the effective participation of more technologies. 2021 will be mainly dedicated to the further implementation of the European platforms for the activation of balancing energy and to the preparation of the connection of the Belgian market to these platforms in 2022.

2.2.2 Adequacy

The federal government in place has a key role to play in ensuring that enough capacity is available in its country to avoid the risk of an electricity shortage and problems of supply. ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM, for its part, provides them with useful information. As an example, ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM performs, in accordance with the law, regular assessments of Belgium’s security of supply situation in the short and longer term.

For the Belgium’s adequacy situation in the short-term, ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM mainly assesses the adequacy between load projections and available generation (incl. Demand Side Response, denoted DSR, load shifting…) in Belgium and the surrounding countries against security of supply criteria defined by law. If the study reveals that the latter criteria may not be met, the Minister in charge of Energy can ask ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM to constitute a Strategic Reserve. A Strategic Reserve is composed of assets sitting out of the market that can be called upon in the event that the market cannot ensure security of supply.

On November 30, ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM has published its probabilistic analysis of Belgium’s adequacy situation for the winter 2021-22. The results of this study are available here: https://www.elia.be/-/media/project/elia/elia-site/public-consultations/2020/20201130_strategic-reserve-2021-22-v_final-1_en.pdf

ELIA TRANSMISSION BELGIUM also looks bi-annually at Belgium’s adequacy situation in the longer term. These studies assess the adequacy between load projections and anticipated available capacity (incl. DSR, load shifting, batteries…) in Belgium and the surrounding countries. The anticipated available capacity includes politically set objectives in terms of renewable generation as well as an economic viability gap to assess if sufficiently