Colloquia

Summary

ProRail is the infrastructure manager for the railways in the Netherlands, that strives to be a zero net electricity user by 2030. Therefore, solar & wind energy projects are developed on ProRail’s assets such as patches of the ground around the railways, noise barriers and railway stations roofs. Together, they need to produce 150 GWh/year by 2030. As a result of the rapid increase of Distributed Renewable Energy generation limitations occur in power grids, however. Consequently, this can lead to deferral of projects, non-maximal utilization of the appointed locations and less interesting business cases. Combined jeopardizing the ProRail’s ambition regarding renewable energy production.

In this study, a generic modelling tool for generation peak shaving has been developed that is applicable for different renewable energy sources, plant sizes, ESS technologies, grid connection capacities and financing structures. Its output reveals whether Energy Storage Systems (ESS) can increase renewable energy production while adding value to a project where transport capacity in the power grid is limiting. The output of the modelled scenarios is assessed and expressed in the Net Present Value, which measures the total added value of a scenario.

The modelling tool was validated by a case study, that considered a maximum potential of a 3.6 MWp PV power plant with 1.5 MW available transport capacity. The result showed that from different financial perspectives Li-ion, Lead-Acid and Vanadium Redox flow batteries could not improve the NPV compared to the alternatives; energy curtailment and increasing transport capacity. Avoiding energy curtailment becomes more interesting for increasing CO2 prices, so this has the potential to push the profitability of ESSs. However, it pushes the alternative for increasing transport capacity as well. So ESS technology prices have to drop drastically and additional (non)financial benefits have to be assigned deployed ESS.