Carbon-Oriented Electricity Balancing Market for Dispatchable Generators and Flexible Loads

The high renewables penetration results in increased imbalance volumes and balancing actions due to system stability requirements. The balancing market (BM) primarily turns down renewable generation and turns up traditional carbon-intensive generation in response to real-time energy imbalance. Existing dual-stage market mechanisms conflict with the carbon reduction trajectory by implementing balancing actions regardless of their carbon footprint. This paper proposes a novel carbon-oriented BM model to coordinate the environmental targets in the dayahead (DA) and real-time BMs. The emissions of dispatchable generators and flexible loads are distinguished by their operation modes and flexibility types, respectively. Carbon signals are incorporated into their bid/offer prices through the proposed carbon emission flow (CEF) model. By integrating these carbon incentives, the dual-stage market model is formulated to minimize economic and environmental costs. Simulation results demonstrate that, overall, although the proposed BM mechanism results in an increased cost of balancing services (159.10 m£), there is a concurrent larger drop in carbon costs (294.14 m£), resulting in a reduction in total cost. It enables system operators to incentivize decarbonized energy resources in DA scheduling and real-time balancing actions.