Co-ordinated Energy Planning in a Deregulated Energy Market

Abstract

Good coordinated energy planning systems are essential for energy companies operating in a competitive energy market. During the last decade new information systems for energy planning have been developed persistently due to the deregulation. Today, the development continues towards more reliable, flexible and user friendly information systems for energy planning. Besides, the emission allowance trading that started recently for EU members has set some new requirements on energy planning.

This Thesis focuses on short-term energy planning realised by an optimisation application. It is discussed the case of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) production, which is a quite common production method in the Nordic countries. A realistic case, an energy company consisting of two CHP plants, is built. Their production of electricity and district heating as well as the energy company's bidding on the spot market is optimised with optimisation software currently under development. The optimisation software used in this Thesis is a part of a large commercial information system of energy planning and management.

Now, when emission trading plays an important role on the energy market, it can be argued that emission allowance trading should be integrated in energy planning and foremost in the optimisation application where the actual production planning takes place. The test case also raises the question how reliable the data produced by the optimisation is and in what extent it can be used in decision making. More reliable data could be produced by coordinated optimisation that would mirror the structure of the energy market itself.