The cooperation of Elering and Fingrid helps Estonian market participants enter the Finnish reserve market

Elering and Fingrid, the transmission system operators of Estonia and Finland, are piloting a solution that will allow Estonian market participants to participate in the Finnish reserve market by providing Fingrid an automatic frequency restoration reserve service.

“The pilot project launched in August offers valuable experience and knowledge for both system operators and market participants in order to be able to cope with ensuring the security of supply in the power system in a situation where the Baltic countries have joined the frequency area of Continental Europe. The importance of automatically initiated reserves is also increasing due to the addition of capacity with non-dispatchable production cycles into the system, above all solar and wind power,” said Taavi Veskimägi, Chairman of the Management Board of Elering.

"The aFRR-market has been in use for several years in the Nordic area, and the volumes traded are growing continuously. Fingrid's goal is to utilize cross border trading on different balancing markets. Procurement of aFRR-capacity from Estonia increases the supply on Fingrid's daily market and thus increases the overall efficiency of the market. This is also a good example of how HVDC-interconnections can be used to support system operations", mentioned Fingrid's President & CEO Jukka Ruusunen.

The Baltic countries are due to join the pan-European Platform for the International Coordination of Automated Frequency Restoration and Stable System Operation (PICASSO) in order to achieve readiness for synchronisation with the power system of Continental Europe by 2025. As a part of the European system, the Baltic countries must be ready for the independent management of their power systems, if necessary.

The Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR) is used by system operators for frequency management if the consumption or production unexpectedly increases or decreases in the power system, and the frequency therefore changes more than permitted in the system.

The demand of this reserve is calculated by the system every 10 seconds, and the reserves are activated automatically within minutes without direct human intervention.

Eesti Energia is participating in the first pilot project of Elering and Fingrid. The company will provide an automatic frequency restoration reserve on the Finnish market with Narva Power Plants which will either increase or decrease production within minutes according to necessity. In order for the impact of changes in the production of the plants located in Estonia to reach the Finnish power system, the energy transmitted via the Estonian-Finnish interconnections must also simultaneously and automatically change. The direct current interconnection EstLink 1 located between Harku and Espoo substations is being used for this purpose. Intermediation of the reserve to Finland will only take place if the electricity connections have sufficient free capacity.

Elering and Fingrid are in process of including additional market participants to the project. The pilot project is open for all Estonian market participants who wish to provide the reserve service to the Finnish system operator. Further information on joining the project is available on the website of Elering: https://elering.ee/afrr-turu-dokumentatsioon.