Overcoming Grid Congestion in the Netherlands: Allocation of Capacity Among Non-Firm Grid Connections

Abstract

With the energy transition already underway in the Netherlands, one of the largest obstacles currently facing this process is the widespread grid congestion.
To deal with this grid congestion, many different flexibility solutions have been proposed. One of these solutions is the use of non-firm grid connections, which dynamically allocate grid capacity to connected parties based on the free space available on their specific part of the grid.
A key design parameter of this flexibility options is the manner in which the available capacity is allocated across the non-firm connections.
In this work, a comparison is made between five methodologies for allocating capacity among non-firm grid connections: a contract age based methodology (and a variation upon it which also takes into account the location of a connection in the grid), a rotating priority list, a pure mathematical optimisation of total allocated capacity as well as a proportional allocation methodology which tries to allocate equally between loads.
To compare these different methodologies, a set of metrics is devised, which attempt to capture the three key dimensions of relevance in this space, each representing a stakeholder: the customer/connection side, the grid operator side and the societal/wider grid user side.
It is found from this comparison across these metrics that each of the methodologies excels at different metrics, making each of them viable in their own respect.