Coordinated scheduling of renewable energy balancing group

Abstract

In the post incentives era, renewable energy sources (RES) need to become balancing responsible market participants. As their controllability is limited and questionably economically feasible, they will, mostly likely, join an existing balancing group or form a new one capable of flexible operation driven by market signals. In line with this, the paper proposes a novel concept of a new market balancing group, coordinating participation of a wind power plant and flexible sources presented by a single actor, the aggregator. The model is cast as a stochastic mixed integer linear programming (MILP) bilevel model where the upper level model is profit maximization of the new market balancing group, while the lower level problem models minimization of end user electricity cost. The two entities collaborate to reduce deviations from market schedules, where their mutual exchange occurs under zero cost. Individual and coordinated market participation are compared considering uncertainties of RES generation and market prices. The results show both cases; when coordinated participation creates financial benefits for both wind power plant and end-consumers, but also scenarios under which end-consumers will not consider offering their flexibility at the market through aggregators as they are better off not changing their supplier or tariff system. The latter case implies inadequate market incentives and products for universal inclusion of flexible end-users into active and price responsive system participation.