Modelling the economic feasibility of distributed flexibility assets in the Dutch electricity markets

This research assesses the economic feasibility of individual battery energy storage systems (BESS) in a small Aggregator Company (AGC) portfolio. Three Energy Management System strategies and their variations are modelled for different prosumer sites. The model makes use of Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimisation to find optimum trading strategies on both the Day-Ahead and Imbalance electricity markets. With current Dutch regulations, BESS belonging to a portfolio smaller than 1MW combined storage is not economically feasible. Passive imbalance trading resulted in the highest economic potential. The best performing prosumer case study reported an LCOE of €74/MWh for a PV and battery system, compared to €73/MWh for a PV only setup. All trading strategies performed better than the benchmark strategy, which only took into account behind the meter benefits. Large-Consumption (LC) prosumers were more suitable candidates for the aggregator portfolio, especially with new 2022 tax regulations that favour larger BESS systems.