Adequacy Methodology

The integration of large amounts of renewable energy sources (RES), the completion of the internal electricity market, as well as new storage technologies, demand side response and evolving policies require revised adequacy assessment methodologies.

Historically, the point with the highest load was chosen to assess generation adequacy, and the same approach was applied to evaluate the associated impacts on security of supply at a pan-European level. However, with the development of the energy generation mix, which means more fluctuating renewables in the system and less conventional fossil fuel generation, critical situations may occur in the future at different times than at peak demand.

ENTSO-E is therefore working to improve its existing adequacy methodology with a special emphasis on harmonised inputs, system flexibility and interconnection assessments.

Over the past months, ENTSO-E has promoted a broad and transparent discussion around the new methodologies, on the short and mid-term, with external stakeholders.

At a first Public Stakeholder Consultation workshop, held on 16 April 2014, stakeholders identified and prioritised key areas of improvements for the existing methodologies, which largely coincided with ENTSO-E’s views on the new challenges arising from increasing RES integration (increasing cross-border trading volumes and growing flexibility of demand), as well as the recommendations made by the dedicated subgroup of the European Commission Electricity Coordination Group:

• There is scope for the existing ENTSO-E Adequacy reports to be strengthened in ways to capture more Security of Supply risks to the pan-European power system – including the increased need for flexibility - as it moves towards increased levels of RES-E.

• The improvements in the existing ENTSO-E methodology should focus on the consistent treatment of variable RES generation and interconnectors.

• In addition to this mandate, it is up to the ENTSO-E Regional Groups to do this if requested to do so by Member States in order to support initiatives started up by Member States.

Following the first workshop, ENTSO-E held a second Public Stakeholder Consultation workshop in June 2014, focused on the methodology proposal, and on 14 July 2014 opened a nine week public consultation (more information below).

Public Consultation on the Adequacy Methodology

From 14 July to 19 September 2014, ENTSO-E ran a public online consultation for the three supporting documents on Adequacy Methodology:

• ENTSO-E Target Methodology for Adequacy Assessment document, which presents the overall goal of ENTSO-E in terms of methodology improvements.

• Scenario Outlook and Adequacy Forecast Evolutions document, which details the improvements to be implemented in the next SO&AF 2015 report and introduce aims for improvements in the next ones to be duly consulted upon in due time.

• Seasonal Outlook Report Evolutions document, which details the improvements to be implemented in the next Winter Outlook 2014/2015 report and introduced aims for improvements in the next Winter and Summer Outlook/Review reports to be duly consulted upon in due time.

The consultation documents, as well as ENTSO-E’s answers to the comments received and the documents updated with the stakeholders’ input are available below:

The documents used for this consultation aim at presenting a high level target methodology and a roadmap for an initial deployment, hence they do not specify methodological details or implementation steps.

ENTSO-E is also aware that the approach chosen will affect in a significant manner the indicators that can be assessed through the simulation, as well as the structure and the complexity of the input data. For this reason, ENTSO-E will further investigate on the choice of approach over the next steps of the methodology improvement process, seeking stakeholder input through expert workshops and consultations.

For more information, please contact Simone Biondi

Related Links

• System Adequacy and Market Modelling