Research Projects

The integration of Renewable Energy (RE) resources in the power sector has led to a significant emphasis on ancillary service procurement. In India, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has proposed redesigning day-ahead and real-time markets and ancillary service procurement mechanisms. India is considering a centralized market clearing mechanism for power trading and handing over the final supply-demand balancing responsibility to the Independent System Operator (ISO) through gate-closure. The ISO will procure ancillary services through this centralized market, performing co-optimization of energy and reserves. As the share of RE resources in the grid increases, supply-demand imbalances become more uncertain due to their high variability. To address these issues, investments in resources with higher flexibility are needed. This research proposal aims to recommend changes to existing system operations to correctly value and compensate different attributes of flexible resources and identify suitable types of flexible contracts for ancillary service procurement. A software package will be developed to model salient features of Indian wholesale power market operations to evaluate the performance of proposed recommendations and suggested flexible contracts.