Evaluation of business cases for renewable generation under consideration of virtual power plants

An increasing share of renewable resources within the energy sector is currently of high priority to European countries to consequently reduce dependency on oil imports and increase savings in carbon dioxide emissions. Integrating renewable resources into the electricity system however, presents an enormous challenge and implies changes to the entire energy sector in Germany. In consequence of a rapidly growing share of intermittent generation a more flexible operation of generation and demand becomes necessary. For this purpose amendments to the Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz (EEG) have been introduced at the beginning of 2012, encouraging renewable generation to operate according to market signals through additional incentives. Due to an increasing number of marketing options for renewable generation, plant operators face new challenges with respect to operation strategies. Therefore, this paper provides an approach to evaluate current and upcoming options for renewable plant operators. Besides, it is shown, that the current market framework does not incentivize provision of ancillary services by renewable generation sufficiently.