On wind farm operation with third-party storage

A major challenge in power system operation is the integration of renewable energy in-feed in large scale. Currently, the responsibility to cope with uncertainty in power injection is transferred to a central authority, i.e. the system operator, while renewable energy in-feed is supported via a tariff system. In this paper we propose market participation of wind farms in combination with a third-party energy storage. A novel concept of storage capacity reservation is presented, where the wind power producer hedges unfavorable wind power realizations with a third-party storage. In a day-ahead scheduling stage, profit maximizing bids for the day-ahead market are stated incorporating costs of storage reservation. During an intra-day stage, the storage device backs up the wind power producer by tracking its day-ahead market bids. In a simulation study we show that after the consideration of the costs of storage reservations and storage operation, the proposed model can lead to profitable operation of wind power plants while reducing the profit variability.