SMA Solar provided a brief insight into the latest smart software offered by CAMOPO Energy – a sister company of SMA Solar – at the recent TaiyangNews Inverters & Battery Storage 2024 Virtual Conference
This software makes real-time optimized scheduling & revenue stacking to make hybrid plant profitable
The company promotes its upcoming Sunny Central FLEX hybrid platform for the evolving energy market
The global energy landscape is transforming, with increasing shares of renewable energy necessitating greater flexibility to balance intermittent generation and maintain grid stability. However, recent uncertainties around price fluctuations, grid capacity & stability, and the risk of curtailments are significantly impacting business cases. Renewable energy projects must enhance operational flexibility to adapt to these challenges and ensure economic viability. As energy markets transition away from subsidized regimes, flexibility becomes more valuable than mere energy generation. This shift is driving changes in market designs and the business models of renewable power plants, prioritizing adaptability to evolving market conditions. The adoption of hybrid projects, such as PV paired with battery energy storage systems (BESS) or PV + Wind + BESS, can address the challenges of the evolving energy market and remain competitive.
Isabella Caschetto, product manager at SMA Solar, provided insights into the latest smart software offered by CAMOPO Energy – a sister company of SMA Solar – at the recent TaiyangNews Inverters & Battery Storage 2024 virtual conference. The software features real-time optimized scheduling and revenue stacking functionality.
Making Hybrid Plants Profitable
Caschetto began by addressing emerging trends in the global energy market, such as Europe’s negative electricity prices at midday due to solar energy overcapacity and Chile’s frequent grid curtailments resulting from limited grid capacity. According to SMA, these challenges can be effectively mitigated by hybrid power plants (PV + BESS) configured as either co-located systems or fully integrated setups, such as DC-coupled or AC-coupled solutions.
Hybrid plants offer the flexibility to decide when and how to utilize generated energy, making efficient plant operations through real-time optimized scheduling essential. Caschetto highlighted that revenue stacking – a strategy to maximize economic utilization of hybrid plants based on local energy market conditions and feasibility – enhances the plant's flexibility, enabling the generation of multiple revenue streams.
The company’s presentation included an example of daily revenue stacking, showcasing multi-market opportunities such as PPA fulfillment, balancing market participation, wholesale market trading, and self-consumption for a hybrid plant. A case study of an optimized intraday schedule for a PV + storage hybrid plant, simulated using CAMOPO Energy software with a multi-market approach, illustrated deviations between scheduled and actual revenue contributions. These included discrepancies in PV forecasts versus actual production and scheduled versus actual battery SOC. These deviations underscored the critical importance of real-time optimized scheduling for ensuring hybrid plant profitability.
In addition to the software, the company introduced its upcoming compact hybrid platform, Sunny Central FLEX. This platform features Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFET semiconductors, achieving high conversion efficiencies of up to 99.2% for AC-DC and 99.5% for DC-DC, addressing the evolving demands of hybrid plant applications.