Roemaat Vrieshuis and QING: what the right energy purchasing strategy provides

Electricity markets

Electricity can be purchased on the (long) term markets, the daily market (also known as EPEX or day-ahead), the intraday market (less relevant for consumers), and when no electricity is purchased, the imbalance price is paid.

In recent years, the daily market has turned out to be cheaper than the futures markets, which is why it was decided to sell futures and buy electricity on a daily basis from now on.

The biggest disadvantage of the daily market is that the prices per hour may vary significantly. At (very high) prices, it can therefore be smart to buy less energy. When you buy at the daily market, the prices alone are not known yet.

That's why QING has a forecasting tool developed for Roemaat. With this tool, Roemaat can estimate when prices become too high and strategically less energy can be purchased at expensive hours.

Therefore, less energy must actually be used the next day. QING will discuss this with the customer; which machines can be switched off or switched on at another time. This decrease in wealth or shift - in combination with smart purchasing - leads to lower electricity costs.

The Qing way of working

Prior to the process, it was clear to Vrieshuis Roemaat what to expect. Both what QING would carry out and deliver, but also some action points from Roemaat, such as providing QING with the right data. In this way, we continue to work quickly and effectively throughout the project, and we run no delay on. That's how QING works.

QING also held regular short discussions with Roemaat to explain the latest findings.

Often, these conversations also lead to new input from the customer, and so customers are properly included in our process. This is important, because it makes it clear how the customer can also use our current advice in the future.

The power of an optimally functioning solar system

We also provided insight into Roemaat's electricity use and solar generation. This showed that the solar panels provided less energy than what was possible. The company had a curtailment strategy (the strategy to turn off solar panels at negative prices) that switched off the solar panels when this was not strictly necessary.

QING recommended that the curtailment strategy to be arranged differently. Now, the solar panels were turned off far too often.

Grid congestion

There is also talk of in Achterhoek, the region of Roemaat: net congestion. Roemaat himself is not yet experiencing any consequences, but that is no reason not to zoom in on this again preventively. This is because network operators offer so-called congestion contracts. These are precisely intended for parties that have assets left over.

For a fee, these parties can temporary release part of the assets. For example, we also recommended that Roemaat should proactively to come up with a proposal to the network operators. Indeed, in the near future, the network operators will have the authority to take contract capital.