Curtailment analysis for the Nordic power system considering transmission capacity, inertia limits and generation flexibility

Although regular curtailment of wind power has not been necessary in the Nordic power system so far, rapidly increasing wind power capacity means that it may be needed in the future. To estimate the amount of curtailment in the future Nordic power system we develop an hourly dispatch model based on open data. The model is validated against historical data and used to perform a case study for the Nordic power system in 2025 to estimate the amount of wind power curtailment under different assumptions. Curtailment is found to be below 0.3% of available generation for a 26 GW wind scenario and below 1.7% for a 33 GW wind scenario, when considering trade with neighbouring systems. The most important measures for decreasing curtailment are found to be increased transmission capacity, particularly between the areas in Sweden and those in Norway and Denmark, as well as flexibility of nuclear generation. Inertia requirements are found to have a limited impact on curtailments. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).