As a result of unbalancing and leaving the energy with the seller, the cooperative must later purchase energy at market prices. If the balancing were complete, then the energy cooperative would use only its own energy and would not incur the costs of distribution services. How to achieve it? One of the possibilities is a properly selected energy storage. It will also make it possible to manage energy flows from the grid, which will further reduce the costs of electricity and distribution services.

It is worth calculating the savings that can be achieved thanks to energy storage using a special calculator available on the website energate.pl of the Polish manufacturer ELMECH-ASE, a subsidiary company in the portfolio of the Mercor Group and the ASE Technology Group.

The subject of activity of an energy cooperative is the generation of electricity or biogas or heat in renewable energy source installations and balancing the demand for electricity or biogas or heat, solely for the own needs of the energy cooperative and its members. Members of the cooperative are connected to an area-defined electricity distribution network with a rated voltage lower than 110 kV or a gas distribution network or a heating network.

Principles of operation of an energy cooperative

An energy cooperative operates in the area of one operator of the electricity distribution system or gas or heating distribution network, supplying electricity, biogas or heat to producers and consumers who are members of this cooperative, whose installations are connected to the network of a given operator or to a given heating network. There may be several energy producers within the cooperative. Production installations may be owned by the cooperative or its individual members. Cooperatives can operate in a rural and urban-rural commune, or three such communes directly adjacent to each other.

In addition to the conditions mentioned above, the cooperative must also meet the following:

number of members less than 1,000, enabling the coverage of not less than 70% of the demand for a given type of energy of all members of the cooperative during the year,

installed electrical capacity not higher than 10 MW, and in the case of heat energy not higher than 30 MW, in the case of biogas production 40 million m3/year.

An obligated seller, who is a licensed seller of a given type of energy designated by the Energy Regulatory Office in a given area, settles with the energy cooperative the amount of electricity introduced into the electricity distribution network against the amount of electricity taken from this network for its own consumption by the energy cooperative and its members in a ratio of 1 to 0.6. The amount of unused energy remains to be collected in the next billing period, but this period may not be longer than 12 months from the last day of the month in which such surplus arose.

This settlement applies to electricity introduced to and collected from the power distribution network by all electricity producers and consumers who are members of an energy cooperative. These settlements are made on the basis of indications of metering and billing devices connected to the distribution network, which are made available by the distribution network operator. Balancing and settlement rules are regulated by the Regulation of the Minister of Climate and Environment of March 23, 2022 on registration, balancing and sharing of measurement data and settlements of energy cooperatives.

The energy cooperative does not pay for the amount of electricity settled as above:

energy billing fees,

distribution fee, depending on the amount of energy consumed,

costs of the so-called commercial balancing.

These costs are covered by the obligated seller within the value of the energy at his disposal (0.4 introduced into the distribution network). The energy cooperative also does not pay the RES fee, the "capacity" fee and the cogeneration fee. There are no obligations to redeem specific energy certificates of origin.

For the purposes of internal settlements of the cooperative, the seller is obliged to provide the amount of energy introduced and collected from the network by individual members of the cooperative. The cooperative will settle it in accordance with internally adopted rules.

Settlement of an energy cooperative - a case study

In the presented example, the settlement was carried out for a newly established energy cooperative whose members are:

1. On the production side:

1 MW biogas plant connected to the 15 KV network;

Photovoltaic sources with a total capacity of 6 MWp, connected to the medium voltage grid;

Wind sources with a total capacity of 3.2 MW, connected to the medium voltage grid.

Prior to joining the cooperative, the producers will receive 6,650,000 zl for the generated energy, in accordance with the prices of won auctions.

2. Receiving side:

Industrial customers connected to the medium voltage grid;

Domestic consumers connected to the low-voltage network;

Commercial and service facilities connected to the low voltage network;

public facilities;

Street lights.

The annual costs of energy supply, calculated for components depending on the amount of energy consumed, amount to 30,232 thousand zl.

After joining the cooperative, the annual balance sheet is presented in the figure below.

 

balance sheet of the energy cooperative

balanced energy taken from the grid

unbalanced energy fed into the grid

 

The amount of energy taken from the grid by the energy cooperative, ie vector-balanced energy for energy consumed and generated for each hour of the year, will amount to 11,596 MWh. The amount of energy transferred to the grid by the energy cooperative, ie vector-balanced energy for energy consumed and generated for each hour of the year, will amount to 3,530 MWh. Within a year, the cooperative will be able to collect 60% of the energy introduced to the grid, without incurring distribution fees depending on the amount of energy consumed. This fee will be borne by the seller, using the retained value of 40% of the energy introduced into the grid, for which distribution fees must be paid.

Therefore, the cooperative will incur the costs of energy supply, which include the costs of purchase of unbalanced energy collected by customers, less 60% of the unbalanced energy received and fed into the grid. The cooperative will also bear the costs of distribution services in this respect.

These costs will be:

The energy purchase costs will amount to 10,404 thousand zl

The costs of purchasing distribution services will amount to 6,458 thousand zl.

Therefore, the annual costs of energy supply to the members of the cooperative will amount to 16,862,000 zloty. The remuneration of producers may increase even to 13,370 thousand zl, depending on the rules of settlements in the cooperative

The energy store will help in balancing

The above example shows that as a result of unbalancing and leaving 40% of the energy with the seller, the cooperative must purchase this energy for consumers at market prices. If the balancing were complete, the cooperative would use only its own energy and would not incur the costs of distribution services. This can be achieved by selecting customers or producers with regulatory capabilities. Another way is to install an energy storage. Such storage can be electric hot water boilers or gas tanks at biogas plants. Another solution could be battery storage. In the cooperative, from the example, an energy storage with a capacity of 2 MW and a capacity of 8 MWh was selected. This amount was also selected due to the possibility of co-financing the investment from the Power Market, as the energy market in Poland is a two-commodity market. We can contract energy trading as well as power reserves, assuming the operation of the energy storage for 17 years.

With annual savings of 2,849,000 zl and the cost of construction of the warehouse 20,800 thousand zl. The payback period of the investment will be 7.3 years. However, if the energy cooperative wins the capacity market auctions, the investment will pay off within 5.7 years. The payback period was calculated with the price of energy supplied in 2023 at 800 zl/MWh, i.e. the price artificially limited by the statutory regulation protecting small and medium-sized enterprises. Since this regulation will not be in force in the coming years and energy prices will be released, customers are already receiving supply proposals at 1200-1400 xl/MWh. Assuming the sale price of energy at 1,200 zl/MWh, the return on investment related to the energy storage will be 5.6 years and 4.6 years, respectively, in the case of providing services on the Capacity Market. In addition, an energy storage such as ENERGATE from ELMECH_ASE will allow you to manage energy flows from the grid, which will further reduce the costs of electricity and distribution services.

The more the amount of energy produced and its consumption is balanced at a given moment, the greater the economic effects will be. When fully balanced, the distribution network will only ensure the continuity of energy supplies and secure the internal energy management.

MV/0.4KV TR station

energy metering Tariff C21em

energy metering Tariff G

energy metering Tariff C

general needs

apartments

Finally, it should be noted that every case is different. Therefore, to check your own situation and how much energy you can save, it is worth e.g. use a calculator to calculate it. An example of such a tool is the ENERGATE energy storage calculator from ELMECH-ASE: https://energate.pl/#calculator. The ELMECH-ASE company, which belongs to the portfolio of subsidiaries of the Groups: Mercor and ASE, has been developing innovative structures for uninterruptible power supply, energy conversion, charging, supervision and management of batteries and improving energy quality for over 35 years. Its industrial energy storage ENERGATE is a solution that from the very beginning protects the industry against the consequences of an uncertain energy market by purchasing energy at tariff times when it is cheaper, storing and using it when it is expensive. A company equipped with an energy storage saves not only on price arbitrage, but also on lowering the capacity fee, eliminating fees for exceeding the ordered power and the consumption of capacitive and inductive reactive energy. The higher the electricity price, the faster the payback time of the energy storage.