All about VPP

Most complex software applications need some form of configuration, often through a configuration file. The more complicated the app, the more difficult become the choices between offering flexibility and improving usability. Configuration is the solution to get the best of both worlds. However, getting it right takes knowledge, experience and discipline and often requires having made all the usual mistakes yourself and learned from them. Now, our team of developers and data-analysts has published their solution to this problem as an open-source python library: PyConfig.

Wed., April 29 2020, 9:30 a.m. (UTC+2)

Higher shares of renewables in electricity mix require perfect coordination of their energy generation to provide a cost-efficient and secure electricity supply and guarantee a stable grid. Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) allow to aggregate thousands of electricity producers, consumers and storage units and to control them according to signals from the wholesale market and system operators. 

Tue., April 21 2020, 3:30 p.m. (UTC+2)

Virtual Power Plants aggregate distributed energy resources (DER) in almost all parts of the world. However, they take different forms depending on the market environment and addresses different challenges of the transitioning energy industry. The webinar presents different Business Models renewable energy companies can adopt and shows how the same technology fundamentals can deliver different value propositions for different types of assets and market actors.

Hendrik Sämisch and Jochen Schwill, founders and CEOs of Next Kraftwerke, on the partnership with Shell Renewables & Energy Solutions

In a Virtual Power Plant, thousands of systems provide balancing services every day. But how exactly are the individual units selected for the provision of balancing energy? Which factors are taken into consideration?

For a couple of years now, the role of the Virtual Power Plant has been established in the energy industry. Today, it is pretty clear what a Virtual Power Plant is and why it makes sense to network, forecast, optimize, and dispatch a fleet of coordinated distributed energy resources (DER) such as wind, solar, bioenergy, hydropower, batteries, electrolyzers, and many more. But how do you make money with a Virtual Power Plant? What’s the business case of a VPP operator, or to use a synonym, of an aggregator?

The journey to the world’s electricity markets continues: This time Felix Jedamzik and Tobias Romberg from our Business Development team were on the road in Thailand and report on their impressions.

Our blog series reports on the electricity markets of the world. Our next stop is Russia – Tobias Weghorn, International Business Development Manager at Next Kraftwerke, explored the country’s VPP potential.

Venturing into a green energy landscape – especially in countries with no established subsidy schemes for renewables – is a huge undertaking, but also leaves a lot of room for establishing new approaches. South Korea is a country that is still in its first steps of establishing a decentralized green energy industry. Haezoom is a start-up from South Korea that specializes in solar power production. Together with Next Kraftwerke, the Seoul-based company sets out to explore the possibilities of utilizing a VPP. We talked with J-Ho Lee, Product Owner (PO) from Haezoom, and Felix Jedamzik, Key Account Manager NEMOCS at Next Kraftwerke.

If a buyer and a seller execute a sales contract for a physical item, the seller hands the product over the counter to the buyer. This is the essence of "over the counter" or OTC trading. In power trading, no physical goods are exchanged, but the principle of a direct, over-the-counter trade for electricity is the same. These trades take place outside of power exchanges without intermediaries or clearing houses. In OTC trading, trading partners are in direct contact with each other or make use of a broker. The transactions themselves occur on trading platforms online or through brokerage companies. Agreements on trading volumes and pricing are reached individually and bilaterally among the parties, but contractual standards for simplification and risk mitigation are gaining acceptance. OTC trading is a common practice in the energy market, representing the largest volume of electricity market transactions in many countries. Conventionally-sourced power is more common for OTC trades than renewably-sourced electricity.