Look-ahead bidding strategy for concentrating solar power plants with wind farms

Abstract The concentrating solar power (CSP) plant with the thermal energy storage (TES) is one of the most effective methods to solve the intermittent characteristics of solar energy. CSP plants combined with wind farms could provide continuous, stable power generation and reduce the uncertainty of the wind power. In this paper, a look-ahead technique is proposed to optimize the bidding strategy for a joint system of CSP plants with wind farms considering both the day-ahead and the following day. It is assumed that the CSP plant participates in the ancillary service (AS) market bidding while providing the reserve capacity for the wind farm to counteract the output fluctuations. As the price-taker, the joint system has different levels of attention to the market price and renewable energy output. Therefore, the scenario set and the chance-constrained programming (CCP) is used to describe its uncertainty, respectively. Besides, in order to further enhance the flexibility and maximize the economic revenues of the system, an electric heater (EH) is added to the model. The joint operator can adjust the final heat storage level to balance profit opportunities during the current market window against potential opportunities in the subsequent market window. Finally, we compare the results of different bidding models to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the advantages of the joint system.