The Nordic transmission system operators (TSOs), Svenska kraftnät, Statnett, Fingrid and Energinet.dk, have launched a report on challenges and opportunities affecting the Nordic power system in the period leading up to 2025.
The main drivers of the changes are climate policy, which stimulates the development of more renewable energy, as well as technological developments and a common European framework for markets, operation and planning. While the system transformation has already started, the changes will become more evident by 2025, the TSOs said.
Closure of thermal power plants, increasing share of wind power, decommissioning of nuclear power plants and a steep increase in interconnector capacity are factors contributing to an increased complexity in power system forecasting, operations and planning.
The main challenges foreseen by the Nordic TSOs in this changing environment are meeting the demand for flexibility, ensuring adequate transmission and generation capacity to guarantee security of supply and meeting the demands of the market, as well as maintaining a good frequency quality and sufficient inertia in the system to ensure operational security.
“Ensuring a common approach from the TSOs is imperative to finding the best solutions to the challenges the power system is facing. As many of our problems are shared, it is natural to find common solutions,” said chief engineer Peter Børre Eriksen, Energinet.dk’s representative in the steering committee.
The report outlines the main challenges and the way forward to finding common solutions. It will be followed by a report which will analyse and prioritize solutions to be implemented by the Nordic TSOs. The follow-up report will be available in Q2 2017.