Price-Optimized Power Procurement for a Charging Park
through Active Control of a Battery Storage System. Storage-EMS meets Power Procurement via Dynamic Electricity Tariff.
Project Objective
The Charging Park Hilden near Düsseldorf at the Hilden motorway junction includes 52 fast chargers and 20 AC charging stations, expanding to 144 charging points in its final stage. This makes it the largest charging park in Europe and a popular meeting spot for e-mobility users.
The Seed & Greet pavilion invites visitors to enjoy sustainable organic products, meet, and spend time. Local power supply is supported by a 430 kWp PV system, which will expand to 1,000 kWp. Additionally, the site includes a 2 MW battery storage system.
Against the backdrop of rising energy prices and the elimination of the EEG levy, it has become increasingly attractive to use innovative energy procurement concepts and to leverage existing flexibility in the form of batteries or other controllable consumers. For the site, both a technical and price optimization of the various local assets, as well as an ongoing, dynamic, and flexible energy-market optimization, are to be implemented.
Avoid Load Peaks, Optimize Procurement Costs, and Increase Self-Consumption
The existing PV system should be utilized on site as effectively as possible, with the generated solar power flowing directly to existing consumers (charging points and the Seed & Greet bistro) or being stored in the on-site battery storage for later use. Utilization of the charging park has increased so significantly in recent years that the PV power is almost completely and directly consumed by EVs. Therefore, the battery storage can increasingly be used for other applications.
The battery storage should also function as a power buffer for demand peaks caused by fast chargers. This reduces grid fees or demand charges—classic components of a local, site-specific energy management system.
The third and newly added energy management component covers the optimization of the residual grid power procurement. The remaining flexibility of the battery storage is to be used to shift grid consumption—and thus battery charging—to periods when electricity prices on the power exchanges are particularly low. This occurs when large amounts of wind and solar power are fed into the grids. Acting as a buffer storage, this allows local electricity consumption to be decoupled from the timing of grid supply.
For the seamless interaction of the three EMS functions described, hardware and software are needed to connect the various influencing factors and flexibility parameters on site and calculate an optimized storage schedule for the battery. Through the dynamic electricity tariff from coneva Flex, the charging park is optimized across all short-term power markets (day-ahead and intraday) using the battery storage system. Here, coneva acts not only as a technology provider for energy management solutions, but also as an innovative energy supplier.
Would you also like to benefit from the interplay between a dynamic electricity tariff and optimization for your operations?
Our sales team will gladly get in touch with you and evaluate the flexibility potential at your site.
Technical Implementation of Battery Storage Optimization
The optimization of electricity procurement costs with the coneva Flex dynamic tariff takes place in two steps:
- By installing the coneva SmartBox as a local gateway that measures and transmits local energy flows, the site is connected to the coneva technology platform. This includes the PV system’s generation output, charging point consumption, total power flow at the grid connection point, and the status of the battery storage system. The coneva SmartBox has several communication interfaces and can send charging and discharging commands to the battery.
- Next, the flexibility potential under the given device and site constraints is assessed, such as size, capacity, and efficiency of the battery storage system, as well as the maximum grid draw. Consumption and generation forecasts are crucial for optimizing power procurement, forming the basis on which the battery charging schedule is calculated.
As an energy supplier, we have access to daily updated electricity prices from EPEX SPOT. Using forecast data, technical constraints, and price information, the coneva Flex EMS continuously generates an algorithmically updated schedule for price-optimized electricity consumption. The optimized schedule is then traded on the energy markets and the required energy volumes procured.
Ultimately, the coneva Flex EMS executes the optimized consumption schedules fully automatically, creating zero additional effort for the customer. A prerequisite for this concept is subscribing to the coneva Flex dynamic electricity tariff, which enables billing based on short-term electricity prices.
Cost Reduction and Flexibility Marketing
By optimizing procurement using the buffer storage, we can significantly reduce electricity procurement costs and cut the required balancing energy in half. The savings potential can be further increased, for example by utilizing quarter-hour prices on the intraday market—where short-term flexibility has a very high value—or by further optimizing and prioritizing the three energy management components.
It may even be economically advantageous to increase the limited peak capacity (and accept a higher demand charge) in order to provide more buffer storage capacity for procurement optimization.
“With the Seed & Greet Charging Park in Hilden, we demonstrate that it makes economic and ecological sense to purchase electricity when it is abundantly supplied by wind and solar. By using a buffer storage, we reduce electricity procurement costs, increase the profitability of the site, and help integrate renewable energies into the power markets.”
“By optimizing electricity procurement with our SaaS solution coneva Flex in combination with our dynamic electricity tariff, we create real added value for our partners and customers. Not only do we provide financial relief, but we also contribute to making the energy transition work on the energy market side.”
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More References
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