Business Feasibility Study for Storage-Based Customer Flexibility Platform of Load-Serving Entity

Abstract

A storage-based customer flexibility (SCF) platform enables on-demand remote access to a shared pool of utility-scale energy storage resources at substantially low costs. It can provide users the ability to charge and discharge electrical energy to and from remote batteries. This study demonstrates the economic feasibility of an SCF platform business under realistic conditions. Accordingly, the load-serving entity is set as the SCF operator, and the subscriptions from various types of customers and multi-use battery energy storage systems are considered to increase profitability. An economic feasibility verification is provided based on the generating pattern of individual customers, and a robust optimization is performed for the SCF platform operations considering the market price uncertainty, aggregated requests, and customers' willingness to pay for the SCF service. The proposed study is simulated in a California environment.