

Small and medium size distributed generators (DG), especially those utilizing renewable energy resources (RES), become more important for the electricity supply in the European Union. Currently most of those technologies receive significant incentives or flat funding independently from the momentary needs of the electricity markets and grids. On a long term, however, these technologies need to be integrated into the electricity market and become more independent from subsidies. Already today there are a number of local approaches for marketing RES and DG in alternative ways, like integration into Virtual Power Plants. With the MASSIG project such innovative solutions will be studied from a European perspective, taking into account national conditions. Technical as well as economic aspects for new marketing concepts are investigated; especially new features created by the combination of generators with different technologies are studied. MASSIG intends to pave the way for investors of RES and DG (range up to several hundred kW) for finding alternative marketing approaches bringing them to the markets and helping them selling power and other electricity products.
In this page:
Results
- Identification of market potentials, concepts, trends, and promising marketing options for Distributed Generation in Europe
- Selection and evaluation of promising marketing options on a country by country basis for Denmark, Germany, Poland and the UK
- Definition and description of a real showcase application operated by the project partner badenovaWARMEPLUS in Germany. For a number of existing CHP systems including thermal storage, options for alternative marketing of produced electricity like selling at energy spot markets or contributing to balancing markets are investigated and simulated
- Discussion of the applicability of the successful Danish concept of full CHP market integration under the conditions in other EU countries. Development of recommendations for regulators on how to adjust framework conditions in order to duplicate the Danish success story.
- Analysis and description of marketing concepts for the further showcases, e.g. a wastewater treatment plant in the Polish city Lodz or the participation of CHP installations in the balancing market in Denmark.
Lessons learned
- Factors directly influencing the market potentials are the regulatory framework and existing alternative support mechanisms for RES and DG, like feed-in tariffs or other incentives. The situation about these aspects is quite different in the four exemplary countries investigated in MASSIG (Denmark, Germany, Poland and the UK).
- The most interesting product categories are electric power, balancing energy, ancillary services and others like self balancing. Products with special importance are tertiary reserve, power exchange products, and peak shaving at local and distribution grid level.
- A case study has shown that under certain conditions CHP combined with thermal storage selling at the German electricity spot market can operate economically feasible, even without getting the feed-in bonus granted by the German CHP law.
Partners and coordinator
List MapFraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. | Germany |
Technische Universität Wien | Austria |
European Renewable Energy Council | Belgium |
EMD.DK A/S | Denmark |
badenova WARMEPLUS GmbH & Co. KG | Germany |
Politechnika Lodzka | Poland |
The University of Manchester | United Kingdom |
Contact
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
Germany
Contact point:
Name:
Jens Pfafferott
Budget
Key documents
In brief
Duration:
06/10/2007 to 05/04/2010 Contract number:
EISAS/EIE/07/164/2007
Website: