The Value of Coordination in Multimarket Bidding of Grid Energy Storage

Grid energy storage plays a key role in making carbon-free, renewable energy production a reality. Yet, when it comes to maximizing profit, owners of storage assets still struggle with coordinating their trading activities across time because of the complex nature of multisettlement electricity markets. In “Coordination of Multimarket Bidding of Grid-Energy Storage,” Nils Löhndorf and David Wozabal propose a multistage stochastic programming model for market-oriented optimization of energy storage. To calculate lower and upper bounds on optimal values, they develop novel methods for scenario-tree generation and information relaxation. They show that a coordinated policy that reserves capacity for the short-term markets is optimal and that the gap to a sequential policy increases with short-term price volatility and market liquidity. The authors find that coordination is beneficial for all considered asset types and that flexible storages with high price impact benefit most. Their findings inform storage owners which markets contribute most value, how to organize trading across time, and how to calculate optimal bidding strategies.