Balancing Services Provision from Wind Turbines: an Italian Case Study

Growing shares of non-programmable renewable energy sources do not only decarbonize the power system, but pose also significant challenges to it due to inherent volatility and the respective need for balancing services. The question therefore arises to what extent they cannot contribute themselves to such services. This paper investigates the economic viability of balancing service provision from wind turbines, based on a case study with real generation and market data from Italy. Different pricing strategies with the impact of feed-in incentives are compared, as well as the performance in different geographical market zones. Findings reveal structural drawbacks of downward services in contrast to positive economic potential for upward services, strongly depending on the wind park’s location and pricing strategy.