Recent rises in the price of electrical energy have drawn incredible
attention to Italian Electricity Markets. These marketplaces have experienced
drastic changes in past years, mainly driven by the desire
to transition to a more sustainable and green economy, which entailed
the growing diffusion of power plants fueled by non-programmable Renewable
Energy Sources. Indeed, these units are able to produce much
cheaper and cleaner energy than traditional CCGT power plants but are
causing a sharp increase in the measures required for the regulation of
the Power System, with balancing resources that have to be procured
by Terna, the Italian Transmission System Operator (TSO), on the
Ancillary Services Market (MSD).
Prediction and interpretation of bids in the Italian Electricity Market for Ancillary Services
My Master’s thesis has the aim to provide a wide-ranging
analysis of MSD, thanks to a thorough study of the offer profiles submitted
by the Production Units operating in Northern Italy. The obtained results combine the
technical knowledge of the departments of Energy and Mathematics of
Politecnico di Milano and the practical experience on electricity markets
of the Research Institute RSE, which supported the initial portion of
the work.
The work is focused on the specific service denoted as “GR1” on
MSD ex-ante, considering bids of both upward and downward types.
These offers will be interpreted on the basis of many predictors, including
both endogenous and exogenous data to the electricity markets.
My findings confirmed the intricacy of the market MSD and showed
how different operators tend to manage their power plants in various
ways, with disparate degrees of both variability and effectiveness of
the submitted bids.