The proliferation of variable renewable energy increases the significance of reserve markets, which provide energy flexibility to compensate for supply–demand mismatches on short notice. Accordingly, market regulators in different locations have been continuously adopting different mechanisms to attract flexible sources, such as batteries to participate in reserve markets. While these mechanisms are different and sometimes contradictory, there is no consensus on their effectiveness. Therefore, there is a dire need to examine their effectiveness systematically. This paper proposes a model-driven decision support system, focusing on regulators’ perspectives, assisting them in evaluating the effectiveness of different market mechanisms for attracting batteries in reserve electricity markets. We formulate the problem as a stochastic Mixed-Integer-Linear-Program, incorporating practical restrictions and applicable to many electricity markets. As an example, we apply our model to the case of the German electricity market to evaluate some market mechanisms. We find that although some reserve markets do not allow separate bidding in charging and discharging directions (asymmetric bidding), this seems to be an effective mechanism to attract battery operators. When asymmetric bidding is allowed, battery operators often optimally choose to reserve their capacity only in the charging direction and use the discharging direction in energy markets, taking opposite seller/buyer roles in energy and reserve markets. Our results also advocate mechanisms such as remunerating the activated energy and shifting the gate closure closer to the time of operation. In contrast, some existing rewarding mechanisms designed for flexible resources do not seem to be very effective.

可变可再生能源的激增增加了储备市场的重要性，储备市场提供能源灵活性以在短时间内补偿供需不匹配。相应地，各地市场监管部门也不断采取不同机制，吸引电池等灵活资源参与储备市场。尽管这些机制各不相同，有时甚至相互矛盾，但对其有效性尚未达成共识。因此，迫切需要系统地检查它们的有效性。本文提出了一个模型驱动的决策支持系统，着眼于监管者的观点，帮助他们评估不同市场机制在储备电力市场吸引电池的有效性。我们将该问题表述为随机混合整数线性规划，结合实际限制并适用于许多电力市场。例如，我们将我们的模型应用于德国电力市场的案例来评估一些市场机制。我们发现，虽然一些储备市场不允许在充电和放电方向上单独招标（不对称招标），但这似乎是吸引电池运营商的有效机制。当允许不对称投标时，电池运营商通常会最优地选择仅在充电方向保留容量，并在能源市场中使用放电方向，在能源和储备市场中扮演相反的卖方/买方角色。我们的结果还提倡诸如补偿活化能和将门关闭时间更接近操作时间之类的机制。相比之下，现有的一些针对灵活资源设计的奖励机制似乎并不是很有效。