A rolling horizon approach for real-time trading and portfolio optimization of end-user flexibilities

Abstract Flexible energy consumption patterns represent a significant potential for end-users to reduce their energy costs due to the increasing price volatility in the electricity spot markets. However, a simple and exhaustive description of flexibilities is needed to efficiently coordinate multiple flexible components. In this paper, we propose a simple and complete method to describe the end-user flexibility potential. The proposed method describes flexibilities of the end-user technologies as a combination of inflexible loads and virtual batteries with variable capacities. This technique allows to describe the flexible components (such as heat pumps and boilers) with the exclusive use of linear relationships which can be implemented in mixed integer optimization problems. Furthermore, a rolling horizon optimization framework is used to define the operating strategy of the end-user components and the trades at the Day-Ahead and the Intraday spot markets. Moreover, we apply our proposed methods to a real-life use case in Austria with measured data to prove their effectiveness, validity and reliability. The results show that trading energy in the Day-Ahead and the Intraday spot markets can lead the end-user to a reduction of the energy procurement costs of 8%, but at the same time increases its energy consumption by 3.21%.