Monetization on the markets: strengthening the business case for flexible energy assets

Your community has made the decision to purchase a large-scale battery to provide community-scale storage for excess solar power generated by its residents. But is such day-to-night storage the only use of the battery? No, far from it. Batteries not only elevate communities to energy-independence while reducing carbon emissions. They can also create a new revenue stream and offset costs in infrastructure and utility bills, thus directly helping consumers to decrease household expenses.As a “flexible asset” the battery stores clean energy to be used later, but it can also generate extra income for the community by offering its storage flexibility across energy markets, i.e "monetizing" energy storage.

Distributed energy assets come with benefits for all stakeholders

The increasing volume of flexibility provided by distributed energy resources – e.g. battery energy storage systems (BESS), renewable energy sources, commercial and industrial loads, and EV charging – is a key feature of the future European power system. It creates the opportunity for market players such as electricity suppliers, aggregators, and flexibility providers to offer new services to multiple stakeholders. To monetize energy assets can bring additional revenue. For instance, a flexibility pool could be contracted• by TSOs as aFRR and mFRR balancing services,• by DSOs to improve their network operations,• by Balancing Responsible Parties for portfolio balancing, or• by any market player active on the wholesale electricity spot markets. Communities not only can generate their own energy supply, but they can also generate extra income on energy markets.

Solar panels in community — *Photo credit: Freepik*

Flexibility Aggregation Software provides access to markets

With regards to the integration of flexible energy assets, CyberGrid’s flexibility management platform plays a pivotal role in advancing EU power systems in the fields of digitalization, interoperability, and monetization.The company’s award-winning proprietary software solution helps energy asset owners monetize their energy assets and diversify the risk of investment by enabling the participation in various energy markets.

CyberGrid's flexibility management software brings energy assets to markets.[/caption]This type of cloud-based flexibility management platform can provide a flexible asset owner, e.g. battery owners at commercial and industrial (C&I) or community locations, the opportunity to participate in markets such as the primary, secondary (aFRR) and tertiary (mFRR) control markets, offer grid stability, peak shaving services, and frequency and voltage control. See the diagram below for an illustration of CyberGrid’s flexibility aggregation platform.

System interoperability and markets

Advancing interoperability and monetization within the scope of the InterConnect project, CyberGrid leads the overarching demonstration in which flexibility assets will be connected to the CyberGrid platform, then offered in the form of balancing services to a simulated TSO.Although the primary objective is to demonstrate cross-border interoperability, it also sets the stage to enable future cross-border monetization of flexibility assets for the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Establishing an interoperable eco-system of flexibility assets in multiple EU countries optimizes the pool of assets market players can tap into to provide a cleaner and more secure grid.At the same time, flexibility monetization across different market segments provides financial opportunities for the asset owners, thereby creating a win-win situation for all parties.With the help of such cloud-based technologies, battery owners (i.e. communities) can optimize their existing energy assets and infrastructure to fund their clean energy strategy.