Flexibility Marketing

Using flexibility from generation, consumption or storage cleverly

Act flexibly on the market

Renewables on the rise, moving away from fossil fuels - the energy markets are in the midst of a gigantic transformation. Along with this volatility has risen rapidly in recent years. This effect is expected to continue in the future, and large scale battery storages that can react flexibly to short-term price changes are experiencing a real boom. Vattenfall, as an active part of the energy transition and one of the largest marketers of flexible generation assets in Europe, is your partner of choice when it comes to marketing your asset.

What does flexibility marketing offer you?

High price volatility on the electricity markets opens up great opportunities for battery storage: charging and discharging whenever the market offers the best value – in day-ahead and intraday trading or in the balancing energy markets. Vattenfall takes care of optimising and marketing your battery storage for you, so you don't have to deal with energy exchanges, market price developments or daily schedules yourself. This allows you to benefit from our expertise and years of experience in marketing flexible assets and receive a fixed, predictable remuneration for the storage capacity you provide.

How does flexibility marketing work?

You ensure the technical availability of your plant, and we pay you a fixed annual fee for the agreed performance. Vattenfall uses proven and continuously developed algorithms to make the best possible use of the agreed storage capacity on the market. Communication and control are handled via a clearly defined interface. It goes without saying that we adhere to all limits defined by you, e.g. maximum number of cycles, as well as safety and grid requirements, when optimising and controlling your system. If the storage facility functions as agreed, you receive stable tolling revenue, while we assume the market and yield risk.

Who benefits from flexibility marketing?

Pumped storage power plants, electrolysers or battery storage systems: You are the (future) owner or operator of such a storage plant and are looking for a partner in marketing and focusing on reliability, long term and stability? With Vattenfall you will benefit from innovative, continuously updated and extended technologies for optimal operation on the market. Use complex and proven algorithms and maximise the value of your flexible generation plant!

Example: Flexibility Value Pools for Battery Systems

Wholesale Market:

Day Ahead-Market as a hedge for activities on intraday market
15-minute blocks on he continuous intraday market allow batteries to profit from arbitrage opportunities and charge/discharge according to prives levels and volatility

Ancillary Services:

FCR, aFFR capacity & energy as additional, potential revenue streams based on fast responsiveness and comparably low costs

Others:

Imbalance, Capacity, Local Congestion, Others

We can flexibly capture the optimisation value of the different products to maximize the revenues of your battery system or other flexible asset.

Challenges and future prospects of flexibility marketing

The increasing share of renewable energies and the associated fluctuating feed-in require flexible solutions for grid stabilisation. Demand-side management, battery storage and intelligent networks (smart grids) play a central role in this. Remotely controllable consumers and generators, aggregable loads and virtual power plants are becoming increasingly important.

However, the responsible players in the energy industry must continue to develop the electricity system in order to make it efficient and secure. Topics such as digitalisation, networking and sector coupling play a major role in this. Smart homes, smart cities and electromobility can contribute further flexibility: smart technologies can control municipal, commercial or private consumers depending on the electricity supply and electricity price or use electric vehicles as electricity storage through bidirectional charging. For this, we need a fair and transparent market that integrates large and small players. Overall, flexibility and its commercialisation offer considerable potential - both for grid stability and security of supply as well as for reducing costs in the electricity market.