Planning of Reserve Storage to Compensate for Forecast Errors

Forecasts and their corresponding optimized operation plans for energy plants never match perfectly, especially if they have a horizon of several days. In this paper, we suggest a concept to cope with uncertain load forecasts by reserving a share of the energy storage system for short-term balancing. Depending on the amount of uncertainty in the load forecasts, we schedule the energy system with a specific reduced storage capacity at the day-ahead market. For the day of delivery, we examine the optimal thresholds when the remaining capacity should be used to balance differences between forecast and reality at the intraday market. With the help of a case study for a simple sector-coupled energy system with a demand for cooling, it is shown that the energy costs could be reduced by up to 10% using the optimal reserve share. The optimal reserve share depends on the forecast quality and the time series of loads and prices. Generally, the trends and qualitative results can be transferred to other systems. However, of course, an individual evaluation before the realization is recommended.