The German energy sector in 2016 – Competition gains, but digitalization…

How did the German electricity sector develop in 2016? This question is answered by the annual monitoring report by the Federal Network Agency in Germany (BNetzA). In this post we summarize the key findings of this report: Competition in generation and retail still on the rise, gas power plants the big winner 2016, renewable capacity increased, but production remained stable and wholesale prices dropped again. 

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Disruptive innovation in the energy sector – definition & application to renewables

Disruptive innovations are supposed to destroy established business models in different markets. For the energy sector, the debate is heating up to which extend certain technologies (e.g. renewables or battery storage) & new digital applications (e.g. AI or blockchain) might disrupt the business case of energy utilities. With this post we provide a basis for this discussion. We built on the definition of disruptive innovation by Christensen and apply this theory to renewables to show that they are actually disruptive for the incumbent energy businesses. 

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Regional Flexibility Markets – A European view on the TSO-DSO interface

Decentralization is one important aspect of the energy transition. Decentralization drives the need for more coordination between TSO and DSO to secure grid stability. Regional flexibility markets might be one solution to establish efficient coordination between the network operators, the network users and market parties. We discuss in this post 5 concepts that are discussed right now in Europe. 

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