Section C: New business opportunities

Thursday, 14 September 2017, 15:45-16:15h/C03

Wind generation as part of an integrated electricity system

Dietmar Reiner, Dr. Thomas Burchhart, VERBUND Hydro Power GmbH, Österreich

In addition to its large hydro power portfolio (127 power plants resp. ~8.200 MW), VERBUND operates a fleet of 153 wind turbines (418 MW) in Austria, Germany and Romania. The bulk of this energy produced by wind power is traded on the conventional electricity market without a fixed feed in tariff. Declining electricity prices over the last few years brought the generation costs in wind energy in the focus and accelerated the continuous optimization of the technical operation within VERBUND significantly. After a short overview of the market situation in Austria and Romania the presentation will provide examples how revenues can be increased and how different funding regimes determine the integration of wind energy in these markets. Trading the produced wind energy on the conventional electricity market in Romania resulted in a complete integration of the assets in the existing electricity market from start on. To explain the consequences the calculation method for the day-ahead forecasts will be presented together with optimization potentials caused by the very specific market situation (asymmetrical costs for balancing energy) in Romania. Within the OPEX, the main cost driver, namely the maintenance and repair of wind turbines, was reduced significantly by optimization of the maintenance strategy in Austria as well as in Romania. In Austria, the cost reduction was achieved with a complete insourcing of all maintenance activities after the fixed feed in tariff whereas in Romania a concept to reduce the OPEX will be developed together with the turbine supplier. The challenges of these steps are summarized in the presentation. With respect to the trading activities in Austria, the impact of the massive increase of the wind energy with all subsequent consequences for the trading after the fixed feed in tariff are shown. The prequalification of wind farms to participate at the balancing energy market in Austria and the use of exceeding energy of wind farms to produce green hydrogen are given as an outlook for the future. Due to all those almost completely implemented measures VERBUND was able to integrate the wind assets in the existing electricity market and will be able to provide a valuable contribution to stabilize the electricity grid being a part of the balancing market and producer of green hydrogen.