Business model evaluation of a hybrid wind-battery virtual power plant dynamically updating the remaining battery capacity

Resumen

This work examines the impact of the loss of battery capacity on the business model evaluation of a hybrid wind-battery virtual power plant that participates in the day-ahead energy and reserve markets of the Spanish power system. The operation of the hybrid power plant is simulated with an optimisation model that considers the cost of the battery's cycle ageing as a function of the depth of discharge and a look-ahead period to consider the opportunity cost of stored energy in the battery at the end of the market scheduling horizon. The battery service life is calculated from the results of the simulations using different approaches, and the battery's revenues and economic feasibility are considered accordingly with such approaches. The results obtained show that neglecting the loss of battery capacity when simulating the operation of a hybrid power plant results in significant deviations in the income estimation. Although the Rainflow Counting Method is commonly used in the literature to evaluate cycle ageing and its associated battery capacity loss, the results obtained in this paper question its reliability under certain circumstances