The devil is in the details. An evaluation of intrazonal congestion management methods in Europe

Abstract

In the European context, the topic of cross-border capacity allocation and congestion management has received considerable attention. However, intrazonal congestion management has largely remained an operational decision of the national transmission system operators (TSOs). The use of balancing markets to solve real-time congestions in the internal grid can be seen as a common feature shared by many European TSOs. However, with the integration of balancing markets at the European level, the TSOs have to reevaluate the congestion management choices. To address this issue, this study utilizes a question-based decision tree method to identify and classify different intrazonal congestion management methods. The identified options are then analyzed based on a comprehensive assessment framework. The conditions for adopting each method are discussed in detail, and the tradeoffs associated with their implementation are evaluated.