Germany is struggling to meet its 2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and climate goals. Against this background, we analyze the current draft National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) that sets out how Germany aims to achieve its national and European climate goals by 2030. We introduce the...

The next years should bring about a rapid transformation of the electricity sector towards high levels of renewable generation. Smart grids are seen as the silver bullet responding to the challenge of integrating renewables, managing flexibility, and keeping the costs down in distribution...

In Deutschland wird derzeit die Ausgestaltung der Anreizregulierungsverordnung für Energienetze für die dritte Regulierungsperiode (ab 2019) diskutiert. Im Kern steht der sachgerechte Umgang mit dem hohen Investitionsbedarf, vor dem viele Netzbetreiber stehen. Die preisbasierte...

An important goal of the European Commission is the promotion of the internal energy market (here specifically electricity), which requires sufficient and adequate cross-border interconnector capacity. However, cross-border interconnector capacity is scarce and, more importantly, the progress of...

The German energy transition massively alters the market structure of electricity supply and forces incumbent electric utilities to rethink their business strategies. We analyze three main developments that undermine the former market dominance of the 'Big 4' incumbents in Germany. First,...

Die Zunahme von Netzengpässen durch dezentrale Erzeuger erfordert eine aktive regulatorische Beanreizung von Maßnahmen des Engpassmanagements (EPM) als Alternative zum konventionellen Netzausbau. Gleichzeitig soll der Kostenanstieg mittels Effizienzanreizen begrenzt werden. Für die geplante...

Diese Studie untersucht die internationalen Erfahrungen mit marktbasiertem Redispatch. Der Fokus liegt auf zwei Ausprägungen von strategischem Verhalten: der Ausübung von Marktmacht und dem so genannten Inc-dec gaming. Dabei kommt die Untersuchung zu zwei zentralen Aussagen. Erstens, in der...

Self-supply can destabilize the finance of a distribution network. This paper analyses under which circumstances the tariff structure of a distribution network is stable or unstable under pressure of self-supply and provides recommendation how to change the tariff structure to restore stability...

This paper presents an approach for resilience incentives in the regulation of electricity network operators. Resilience is the ability of the power system to deal quickly and efficiently with large-scale and long-lasting power interruptions. It comprises two related aspects: minimizing the...

Market design for electricity often ignores network congestion initially and addresses it in a second, so-called 'redispatch' stage. For market participants, any two-stage design offers an opportunity to strategically optimize between the different market stages. The current debate is how to...