Impact of renewable power and market price forecasts on the operational profitability of hybrid power plants

The operational profitability of co-located hybrid power plants (HPPs) consisting of wind and storage has emerged as a subject of great interest in both academia and industry. Addressing the uncertainties associated with wind power and market prices during the operation process has become a critical focus. While existing studies have explored optimal HPP operation in markets with uncertainties, a comprehensive understanding of the impact of forecasting errors on HPP profitability remains limited. This paper fills this gap by performing case studies on two HPPs that are assumed to be located in Western Denmark and Western Sweden, respectively. Customized energy management systems (EMS) are deployed to operate the HPPs in spot markets. The EMS contains a spot market optimization for the optimal offering in spot markets. Additionally, CorRES is utilized to simulate available and day-ahead forecasts of wind power. The long-short term memory network is utilized to forecast spot prices. Then, the scaling model is utilized to generate different levels of forecast errors for renewable power and spot price, respectively. The EMS is then utilized to assess the impact of these forecast errors on HPP profitability. The findings reveal that wind power forecast errors have a more significant impact on profitability compared to spot price forecast errors. The main reason is that spot price forecasting errors have no impact on the loss of profits in balancing markets, which solely depends on wind power forecasting errors.