Germany’s Next Kraftwerke is bringing to market a new product that allows energy companies to establish their own virtual power plants.
Launched at the annual E-World show in Essen, the Nemocs solution allows utilities and grid operators to establish virtual power plants in which decentralised energy assets can be aggregated.
Using the system capacity and flexibility can be totalled and brought to market, with each individual asset within the virtual power plant able to be operated remotely.
Next Kraftwerke described Nemocs as a “software-as-a-service solution”. Operating schedules can be put into place to manage the virtual power plant or they can be tied to energy prices, allowing owners trade and exchange power at profitable times.
It claims to process price and network signals from transmission system operators within seconds, converting them into commands for all assets within the network.
Jochen Schwill, co-foundr and chief executive at Next Kraftwerke, said the solution had been conceptualised after the company received requests from three continents for them to help manage network flexibility.
“As we developed NEMOCS, we included every idea and feature that our own IT experts and energy traders have created and put to use,” he said.
Next Kraftwerke is well versed in operating virtual power plants having maintained the Next Pool VPP since 2009. That has grown to more than 5,000 linked energy assets with a combined capacity in excess of 4GW.
Last year Eneco, one of Europe’s largest energy companies, acquired a minority stake in Next Kraftwerke as it looked to feed into the company’s “strategic expansion”.