Economic viability of price arbitrage operation of vanadium redox battey in Alberta's energy market

摘要

With the rising need for energy storage facilities in power systems of various jurisdictions, it is imperative to investigate the profitability of operating energy storage facilities. This paper assesses the economic viability of a transmission-connected Vanadium Redox Battery (VRB). The system under consideration has a power rating that is large enough that the impacts of its operation on the pool price in the Alberta electricity market should be considered. Using 5 year historical price data, we run a self-scheduling mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model to estimate the maximum possible operational profit operating in Alberta's “Energy Only” market. The rate of return on the investment considering 2011 capital cost estimate and forecasted 2020 cost estimate are calculated, based on the simulated cash flow. The predicted ROI is shown to vary significantly depending on the window chosen as “typical” cash flow.