You operate a large industrial plant? You have flexible processes in your company? The flexibility of your demand has a high value.
A dedicated team of engineers and economists specialized in demand response will identify flexible processes together with you, calculate potential revenues and propose a strategy to valorize your flexibility where it is worth most - both on the electricity and reserve power markets. Our services for industry but also for smaller consumers can be split in the following three categories:
Reserve power provision
We can integrate flexible processes on your site in our Next Pool. Respecting the technical & economical restrictions we can offer demand response flexibility to Elia for reserve power (R1, R3) & earn additional revenues for you.
Market Access & trading services
We provide access to the intraday, day-ahead market including long-term hedging options. Our experience from Germany shows that often flexibility is worth most on these short term markets. To use flexibility on the short-term market does not exclude the option to additionally provide reserve power.
Highly flexible energy supply
We can offer you energy supply tariffs that allow the valorisation of your flexibility on the short-term market while you are still ensured against rising electricity prices. The best of two worlds!
You stay in control
It is crucial that the use of flexibility does not interfere with day-to-day operations unless the additional revenues compensate for an adaptation of the process. Our control system will respect the restrictions you set at all times. You stay in control.
In case the amount of flexibility you can make available varies over time or is strongly restricted to specific time windows, you can still offer reserve power products to Elia being part of our Virtual Power Plant. This is because possible unavailability at your site will be absorbed by the Next Pool. While every process on itself might not be fully available, the Next Pool as a whole delivers a very stable profile.
The optimal solution for you
Every operation is unique and therefore we commit ourselves to design a tailored solution for you. Request a revenue calculation and we determine where your flexibility can be commissioned best through our demand response solutions. Together we investigate how we can put your installation at work optimally. Below you find some examples and case studies of demand response:
Pumps - Intraday and day-ahead market trades
Matthias Reimers is CEO of a public association that operates and maintains, among other things, pumping stations on a dike on the North Sea in Germany. The pumping station being part of the Next Pool pumps rainwater back into the North Sea to keep the salt marsh habitable and cultivatable.
The electricity to power the water pumps is delivered by Next Kraftwerke. The pricing system is unique allowing long-term security against rising electricity prices while fully exploiting the opportunities on the day-ahead and intraday market using smart control algorithms. "Our systemknows when it is cheapest to pump the water back into the North Sea and can automatically adjust every 15 minutes.” says Matthias Reimers.
It is the flexibility of the pumping station that creates the highest gains from Next Kraftwerke’s pricing system. Water can be pumped back into the North Sea within a 15-centimeter range in the reservoir. The range provides the necessary degree of flexibility to allow the pump station to vary when it operates. Next Kraftwerke utilizes this flexibility to reduce the pump’s electricity costs. “We were able to reduce our energy costs by 30 percent,” Reimers explains. He emphasizes that “it is our overall priority to keep the marshland dry, but by cooperating with Next Kraftwerke, we can also reduce our costs without impacting this goal.”
Reimer’s association had other reasons for trying out the offered product. As coastal dwellers, they feel a sense of duty to help reduce the effects of climate change. “We want to use our flexibility to further the integration of renewable energies into the grid,” Reimers says. “We are convinced this is sustainable.”
Cold stores - Short-term trading and reserve power
This is the classical example for demand response. The temperature level is allowed to vary in a certain band which can be wider or smaller depending on the goods that are stored, e.g. -10°C to -14°C. That these boundaries are respected is of utmost importance as otherwise goods of millions of Euros can spoil.
The need for cooling is influenced by various factors: by ambient temperature, by opening the doors for to store new goods or empty the store and the temperature of the newly stored goods among others. Still there is a significant amount of flexibility that can be used on the reserve power and electricity market.
From experience in Germany we see that most revenues can be found by using the flexibility on the electricity market. Today most cold stores already operate in a day-night tariff scheme, but still miss the opportunities that lie in trading on the day-ahead and intraday market. Next Kraftwerke offers different flexible supply contracts combined with smart control algorithms that allow full exploitation of the cold store's flexibility on these markets and furthermore allows to offer reserve power products on top.
Ventilation systems flexibly operated
Many industry production processes include ventilation. Sometimes ventilation is operated in blocks being switched on and off, sometimes the ventilation system is constantly running. Often it is possible to use the ability to quickly increase or decrease the ventilation, increasing or decreasing power consumption without affecting the industry process. This is in particular the case when ventilation is used for reserve power products that are only rarely activated. However, in cases of almost continuous ventilation it is possible to provide reserve power products with continuous activation by running the power consumption around an average operation point.
Again highest revenues can be gained when combining reserve power products with flexible supply contracts with options to benefit from day-ahead and intraday price peaks.