6 research outputs found
Integrating Wind Power into the Danish Electricity System
The present study involves an inquiry into the making of a Danish energy system
based on renewable energy sources. Focusing specifically on one of the major
barriers to the introduction of renewable energy sources known as the
intermittency problem, emphasis is put on how fluctuating electricity generation
from wind turbines has been integrated into the Danish electricity system. The
study focuses on the ways in which the integration of wind power in Denmark has
involved the introduction and reconfiguration of a series electricity markets known
as Nord Pool. Significantly, these electricity markets are engineered as control
arrangements for electricity system equilibrium maintenance. When attempting to
integrate wind power into the Danish electricity system by introducing or
reconfiguring these control system market arrangements, metrics from economics
are used to describe the ideal outcome or objective to be attained through market
construction. Coupling these empirical observations with a line of inquiry
concentrating on the use of knowledge, skills, and know-how in market design and
management associated with the ‘performativity programme’ in the social and
human sciences and especially economic sociology the thesis is framed by the
following research question: How have control systems engineering and
economics been mobilized in the endeavor to integrate wind power into the
Danish electricity system through electricity market design and management?
Answering this research question involves an analysis of three different instances
of electricity market construction. All three cases demonstrate how integrating
wind power into the Danish electricity system has been approached as a matter of
electricity market construction increasing the capacity of Nord Pool to exert
control and maintain equilibrium in the electricity system. In addition to producing
insights into how the intermittency problem is being handled in Denmark, the
present study seeks to augment the performativity programme in two ways. One
way is to show how control systems engineering, being an understudied form of
expertise within the performativity programme, has played a crucial role in the
design and management of a series of markets. The other is to show how
economics, being a form of expertise studied extensively by the members of the
performativity programme in other empirical settings, has had heretofore
undescribed functions in market design and management