Battery Energy Management of a Telecommunications Company to Participate in the Curtailment Market and Reduce the Total Energy Cost

The use of batteries as a backup in case of power outages is frequent in telecommunications companies that need to keep their services always active. Also, these batteries can be used when the energy costs more, to reduce the electricity bill, as long as the safety usage rules are respected. A new context of use is to participate in the curtailment market, which is a key financial lever for the transmission grid to balance energy demand and offer. The company would use its batteries if called upon to reduce its energy consumption when the power demand is greater than a country's production, receiving a reward in exchange. Our focus in this work is to optimize over time the use of batteries installed for backup in case of power outages to participate in the curtailment market and also to reduce the energy OPEX for the company. We formally state the related optimization problem and propose a mixed-integer program to address it. Such a model is investigated with tests based on real data of a telecommunications operator in France. Simulation results prove the efficiency of our solving approach and the relevance of using batteries to participate in the curtailment market and also to reduce the energy cost for the company.