Economic Assessment of Energy Storage Systems in Alberta's Energy and Operating Reserve Markets

In this paper, an optimization-based self-scheduling model is developed for an energy storage system participating in both energy and operating reserve markets of the Alberta electricity market. Preliminary results from two demonstrative cases as well as sensitivity analysis are conducted to investigate the potential revenue streams for an energy storage system as in the Alberta electricity market. At first, the features of Alberta operating reserve system is studied in detail. Furthermore, the mechanism of pricing and clearing the operating reserve market used by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) is probed and explained. Thereafter, a co-optimization platform for the self-scheduling of the storage facility is developed. The publicly available historical data of the Alberta electricity market are used to explore the potential revenue opportunities obtained from different products offered by the facility. The result show that the majority of the revenue is gained from the operating reserve market, primarily from the regulating reserve and then spinning reserve services.