Management of Energy Storage Coordinated with Wind Power under Electricity Market Conditions

Under electricity market operation, the competitiveness of wind power generation may be reduced because of the stochastic nature of the wind resource, which often results in increased regulation costs. The negative impact associated to the stochastic nature of the wind resource may be reduced by coupling the wind farm with energy storage facilities, thus constituting a virtual power plant. In this paper, a novel method is proposed for scheduling and operating such a plant in an electricity market environment. The proposed method is able to take advantage of existing market opportunities for increasing operational profits while smoothing out energy imbalances caused by the errors associated to wind power forecasts. The results obtained for a test case based on real-world data for a whole year of operation are compared and discussed.