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Intermittent assets

Hybrid.

A battery placed beside a renewable plant, on the same connection point, is a different decision problem from a standalone battery. It is the problem we specialise in.

The problem

A battery beside a plant is not a battery.

A standalone battery is a pure decision problem: known prices, known state of charge, known capacity. A battery co-located with a solar or wind plant, on the same connection point, has all of that plus a source of uncertainty that conditions every subsequent decision.

Connection capacity is shared. Charging from the plant or from the grid is treated differently. And a reserve offer made now depends on output that has not happened yet.

What we do

One joint decision, not two decisions glued together.

The hybrid asset is optimised as a single unit. The plant’s output distribution enters the battery’s dispatch decision directly, instead of the battery working off a fixed central value.

  • Connection point constraint. Shared capacity is a constraint inside the optimisation, not a check performed afterwards.
  • Cycle cost inside the objective function. Degradation and state of charge enter the decision. A cycle only happens if it pays for what it costs.
  • The battery as forecast-error cover. Part of a co-located battery’s value is not arbitrage: it is reducing exposure to the imbalance of the plant beside it.
  • Using the clipping. Energy the inverter would clip at midday has near-zero marginal cost and is the cheapest charging there is.
Why this is where we are different

Most optimizers work with batteries.

enspired, Entrix and suena are battery companies. That is a market with known resource and a pure decision.

wattimize works mainly with renewable assets without a battery, and with co-located batteries. It is a different problem: the resource is uncertain, forecast error is the main source of cost, and the optimisation has to treat uncertainty as a first-class object. That specialisation is what makes sense in the Iberian market, where most installed capacity is intermittent.

A great deal can be done without owning a battery.

The thesis

Contact

Preliminary assessment of an asset.

The plant’s history is analysed separating the weather effect from the dispatch effect, and the result is quantified.