Emergency power generators often have an untapped source of income: By generating electricity at short notice that can be used to stabilise the power grid. As the operator of one of the largest virtual power plants in Europe, we offer you the opportunity to provide control energy with your emergency power generator and thus turn a cost factor into an additional source of income. And all this without any additional effort or investment costs.
Fluctuations in the electricity grid are increasing due to the fluctuating supply of wind and solar energy. If, for example, the current electricity consumption exceeds the electricity production, this must be compensated by capacity reserves - so-called positive control energy. Your emergency power generator can easily supply such capacity reserves, provided it has a minimum output of 250 kW and can run synchronous with the grid frequency.
Additional revenues: You achieve attractive revenues with your emergency generator and thus turn a cost factor into a source of income.
Service-oriented: We take care of the connection of your emergency power to the virtual power plant and carry out the test procedure for the control energy, the prequalification, for you.
Safety: Your genset continues to serve its primary function, of course. Emergency operation always takes precedence over control energy calls.
Restrictions: You can also limit the operating hours of your genset to a defined call time per year.
My Power Plant is our customer portal that you can use on your PC or via app on your smartphone. In the customer portal, you can view and manage the status of your emergency generator, edit data, and download invoices.
Calls: You can be notified about reserve power calls of your emergency generator.
Fault notification: In the event of faults, you will also receive notifications via the app on request.
Maintenance times: You can conveniently register maintenance and repair times via the portal.
Here you will find answers to many questions concerning the integration of your emergency generator into the virtual power plant. We will also be happy to answer your questions personally. Just get in touch with us!
The basic prerequisite for integrating the system is grid parallelism. This means that the emergency generator must be connected in parallel to the power grid so that it can feed into the distribution grid. In addition, a genset should have an output of at least 250 kW, or even better 350 kW, so that integration into the Next Pool is worthwhile for you.
The basic principle for connecting an emergency generator to the virtual power plant is that the emergency generator continues to serve its original purpose. The connection to the Next Pool is merely an opportunity to generate revenues where previously there were only costs. The remote control unit is switched in such a way that emergency operation always has priority over control energy calls. However, the operator can also intervene manually at any time. If the operator can foresee the use of the emergency generator, this must be reported and a control energy call must be excluded for the corresponding time.
In order to sell the capacity of your genset successfully on the reserve power market, a connection to the Virtual Power Plant via the Next Box is necessary. If the transmission system operator activates a certain amount of reserve capacity, our control system automatically determines the best operating plan and schedules the systems in the Next Pool accordingly. The Next Box is your link to the virtual power plant. Communication between your genset plant and our control system takes place via a secure mobile connection that meets a legally prescribed requirement for the telecontrol capacity of a plant. The Next Box also enables you to operate your system according to a price-based scheme, which opens up additional trading opportunities.
No, in principle no bottlenecks are to be expected in fuel supply, as call-offs are usually quite short (usually only a few minutes per call-off). In addition, at times when longer call-offs are expected, which usually occurs during holidays such as Easter and Christmas, the maximum duration of the call-offs can be limited by the control system.
Next Kraftwerke brings all the experts together under one roof to successfully market your emergency power: our engineers, technicians and negotiators work closely with our sales and customer service team to ensure the best possible results in the electricity market.