Widespread usage of the Optimate simulator by regulators and transmission system operators (TSOs) could lead to some leading electricity firms losing market power, said one of the developers.
Johannes Mayer, head of competition and regulation in the Austrian regulator Energie-Control, said that Optimate’s success depended on its attracting enough users.
Francois Beaude, a research engineer at RTE, a French TSO, told Utility Week that not all regulators had the capacity to use the model, but could use contractors.
Optimate models generation and cross-border power flows, to understand and to assess market designs, to help the European Union (EU) achieve a single energy market and its 2020 objectives of greenhouse gas emissions 20 per cent lower than in 1990 and renewables accounting for 20 per cent of energy consumption.
Optimate analyses day-ahead, intra-day and balancing markets and the effects of large amounts of intermittent renewable energy, under policies such as FITs and feed-in premiums. Simulations can typically show economic efficiency (prices etc), security of supply and environmental impacts, said Beaude.
The model has been developed in a three-year, Euro 4.25 million project, funded partly by Euro 2.6 million of EU money. Managed by the French consultancy Technofi, it had five TSO and six academic members.