Automated commercialization of flexibilities, simple and revenue-optimized
You want to know which functions we offer and how they work exactly? We will be happy to take the time for a non-binding product presentation.
FlexPowerHubMicroservices
Comprehensive connectivity through a modern interface infrastructure and cooperation with established stakeholders enable a wide range of services & functionalities that can be quickly and easily docked to internal processes.
API Service
FlexPowerHubData-Service
Our approach is “API-First”. We use REST API’s to serve our various micro-services and dock to each customer’s system. A major advantage is the lower resource requirements, in contrast to the implementation of conventional software. With FlexPowerHub as a web-based full-service solution, no additional software is required.
With our data service, we are paving the way for the first step towards fully automated auctioning on the balancing energy market. Various parameters of your optimization system can be retrieved via our interfaces for the bid calculation in a 15-minute grid. Accordingly, the active strategies always recalculate themselves before the bids are submitted and are thus closer to the optimum.
Furthermore, own forecasts and price time series can be imported.
DeepLearning Forecasts
FlexPowerHubDeepLearning Forecasts
As a Data Science company, our competencies lie primarily in the development of our forecasts. FlexPowerHub offers a broad portfolio of forecasts for the balancing power markets, currently for Austria and Germany. More countries will be added in 2022, as well as further forecasts for energy markets e.g. spot and intraday.
Balancing energy market
In balancing energy, our focus is primarily on 3 target variables:
- Energy price
- Capacity price
- Retrieval rate
In addition, we still offer the tendered service as a forecast. Specifically, the most relevant quantiles, for both prices and retrieval rates, are estimated here. These quantiles can also be output in the form of cumulative MW steps.
In order to have a continuous estimate of the MOL for the optimization of the ongoing bid calculation, customer-specific MOL forecasts are derived from the quantile estimators. On the one hand, to prevent negative feedbacks of the actual bids on the forecasts, and on the other hand, to avoid identical bids. Our forecast system offers all customers statistically exactly the same forecast quality. All our forecasts are calculated several times a day, depending on the forecast horizon, and are actively monitored in the event of disruptions.
Customer bids or time series of own forecasts, price limits, strategy parameters, etc. entered at FPH are under no circumstances taken into account or included for the preparation of forecasts.
In 2022, FlexPowerHub will expand its services to additional countries. Specific planning for country expansion will be fixed in Q4 2021 and is dependent on customer preferences in addition to the roll-out of Picasso & Mari.
Further markets
In addition to balancing energy, we will also offer other relevant forecasts for the energy sectors from the beginning of 2022. In addition to the classic market prices for the spot and intraday market, the previously internal nationwide PV and wind feed-in forecasts will also be made available to our customers.
Bid Generator
FlexPowerHubBid Generator
With the Bid Generator you create unique and individual strategies for your assets. Strategies can be created per asset or for an entire energy pool. Tailor-made and suitable bids are automatically generated for you. The calculated bids are sent to our customers daily at a predefined time, or can be conveniently picked up via the download function.
The Bid Generator is included in the basic package and can be additionally extended by the data-service and our DeepLearning forecasts. For the automated bid calculation, strategies have to be stored once. These can be readjusted, duplicated or deleted at any time. In the application, the market, product time slice and the control zone must first be selected. After that you define your individual parameters. In the application, we distinguish between output price and work price. Different settings can be made for both. Using the risk percentile, bids are mapped to the projected MOL. A snapshot is also displayed for this purpose. Additionally, custom free-bid strategies can be created for RAM. To calculate the bids, the last step is to select the forecasting method. The basic package includes various analytical forecasts for the individual markets. If you have a license for the FlexPowerHub DeepLearning predictions, they will be unlocked in the selection box.
Via our Data-Service various parameters can be uploaded to our Bid Generator. Thus, volume, marginal costs, etc. do not have to be entered manually. We also offer the possibility of importing your own forecasts via the data service. These can also be used for the bid calculation.
Stored strategies can be evaluated via our backtesting feature to find out which revenues could have been generated with the selected strategy. Backtesting can calculate revenues for a period of two weeks. All results can also be exported as csv. or xlsx .
If different bids are submitted for the same market, you can group them together and prioritize them. Thus, own bids cannot push themselves out of the MOL.
Bid Manager
After creating the strategies for the individual assets in the bid generator, the bids are triggered again with our bid manager and submitted to the respective TSO via the FlexPowerHub interface.
Our Bid-manager offers 3 ways to submit bids:
- Ad-hoc bidding (manual process)
- Manual workflow (semi-automatic process)
- Auto workflow (fully automated process = auto bidder)
Individual workflows can be created:
- Selection of the automation wheel
- Selection of the bid update time, calculation lead time before Gate Closure Time.
- Deposit of specific schedules & marginal costs
- Selection TSO connection, market, balance group, etc.
The overhead results are processed back into the customer system via FlexPowerHub. Capacity market quantities that have not been awarded can be offered again via freebids.
Another function is the so-called "market cockpit". It provides a graphical representation of the bids carried forward, including their awards and future planned bids.
The "Release Center", on the other hand, provides a listing of all bids. Here all can be checked again, also deleted if desired. If a manual bidding has been set, the bids will be released manually here.
Furthermore, it provides an insight into the status of the bids, whether they have already been transferred to the TSO.
Finally, there is the possibility to view all workflows and their transmission in the "Eventlog".
Dashboard
With our interactive Grafana dashboard, we offer you an automatic preparation of the current fundamental data, weather data and necessary market data of the balancing market.
There is an automatic update and visualization of all surcharge results and market data of all markets:
- PRE, SRE & TRE:
- Merit-Order-List
- Accepted quantity (MW)
- Capacity price
- SRE -> Capacity- & Energyprice
- Marginal price (PRE)
In addition to this, with the "Forecast Info" we have a detailed overview and visualization of the forecast and actual data of all forecasts we offer:
- Accepted quantity (MW)
- Merit-Order-List
- Comparison of different quantiles and MW-steps
This allows absolute errors of the forecasts to be compared with the actual values.
If desired, an export function for sending to other departments or a daily report is possible.
ongoing Updates
Our services are constantly being developed so that our customers are always one step ahead. Future market design changes are mapped via FlexPowerHub. With special regard to PICASSO & MARI, we implement all modalities & functions in each service.
What are PICASSO & MARI?
The EU-Commission Regulation on the Electricity Balancing Guideline (EBGL) gave the go-ahead for cross-border procurement of balancing energy in 2017. The EBGL refers not only to the roles of the transmission system operators of the participating countries, but also to the implementation and development of the technical basis or the new European platforms via which the “balancing” is to take place across countries in the future.
The platforms for the European (partial-) harmonization are PICASSO for aFRR (secondary market), MARI for mFRR (tertiary market) and TERRE for RR (replacement reserve). PICASSO & MARI in particular will be of particular importance to participants in the balancing energy market, as it will fundamentally change the existing market design. Modality changes include shortening product time slices for energy auctions to 15-minute products. This means that in the future there will be 96 auctions every quarter of an hour instead of 6. The Gate Closure Time for this purpose is 25 minutes before the start of the product.
PICASSO & MARI, Opportunity for balancing energy market – participants?
It is hoped that the cross-border tendering of control reserve will help to bring costs down to a lower level and at the same time encourage more participants to take part in the balancing energy market. However, the changes in market design mean a considerable additional effort and increasing complexity for participants and tend to act as a deterrent for smaller companies in particular. For Austria and Germany, the implementation of the target market design is planned for Q2 2022.
Automation as a solution?
The upcoming harmonization brings plenty of complexity to the future balancing energy market. Increasing complexity and time pressure with lower revenue prospects have a deterrent effect in the first place. Participants will be challenged to optimize their existing processes in order to avoid increased personnel costs as much as possible. Process automation allows individual existing processes to be bundled and automated. And this is where FlexPowerHub comes into play. With our product we digitize & optimize the existing workflow in the control energy market. Through our automation, we reduce the amount of time required and, as a result, personnel costs. Our services can be integrated into your leading system via interfaces within a very short time, which leads to a significant reduction in the workload of your own IT. With FlexPowerhub, we not only map the current market design, but also all future changes.
FlexPowerHubWorkflows
Future participants in the balancing energy market
As an operator of flexible plants, benefit from our DeepLearning forecasts and automatic bid calculation.
Digitization bidding process
Do you already participate in the balancing energy market, but see potential for improvement in your process?
Full automation of existing processes
Automated workflows, controllable interfaces, etc. Define individual workflows with FlexPowerHub and optimize your existing bidding.
Test FlexPowerHub for 1 month without obligation and convince yourself of our solution for smart commercialisation of flexibilities.