Optimized Operation of Standalone Battery Energy Storage Systems in the Cross-Market Energy Arbitrage Business

Abstract: The provision of renewable electricity is the foundation for a sustainable future. To achieve the goal of sustainable renewable energy, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) could play a key role to counteract the intermittency of solar and wind generation power. In order to aid the system, the BESS can simply charge at low wholesale prices and discharge during high prices, which is also called energy arbitrage. However, the real-time execution of energy arbitrage is not straightforward for many companies due to the fundamentally different behavior of storages compared to conventional power plants. In this work, the optimized operation of standalone BESS in the cross-market energy arbitrage business is addressed by describing a generic framework for trading integrated BESS operation, the development of a suitable backtest engine and a specific optimization-based strategy formulation for cross-market optimized BESS operation. In addition, this strategy is tested in a case study with a sensitivity analysis to investigate the influence of forecast uncertainty. The results show that the proposed strategy allows an increment in revenues by taking advantage of the increasing market volatility. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of the proposed strategy, as only a moderate portion of revenues will be lost if real forecasts are adopted.