Next Kraftwerke has begun power trading for a proportion of the 759MW Hollandse Kust Noord (HKN) offshore wind farm following the start-up of the project’s first turbines.
The wind farm is being built off the coast of the Netherlands by CrossWind, a joint venture of Shell and Eneco and will be fully operational at the end of this year.
Next Kraftwerke acts as the Balancing Responsible Party (BRP) of the wind farm and trades Shell’s share of electricity on short-term markets.
Eneco will trade its own share of electricity.
The goal of the collaborative approach between Shell and Next Kraftwerke is to combine their know-how from long-term hedging and short-term optimisation.
“At Next Kraftwerke we have many years of experience in managing assets of different sizes optimally on the different wholesale electricity markets and we are experts in providing flexibility for grid balancing”, said Hendrik Sämisch, CEO at Next Kraftwerke.
“Once the park has been fully commissioned – we’ll take care of curtailment for redispatch and reserve power provision to the Dutch transmission system operator TenneT, the developer of the ‘offshore power socket’ connecting HKN to the grid.
“Shell is taking care of the long-term hedging and contributes with specialised and reliable wind forecasts thanks to its experience with other Dutch offshore wind parks.”
With the first power injection from the wind park, NextKraftwerke assumed its role as the BRP.
In this role, Next Kraftwerke’s task is to maintain the balance between energy injection and offtake by appropriate trading activities and, if necessary, by curtailing power generation.
Curtailment measures will play a significant role when the wind park is fully operational and its power generation is integrated into the portfolio.
As the park doesn’t rely on guaranteed revenues from subsidies, it needs to optimally respond to fluctuations in market prices.
During moments of negative day-ahead and intraday prices, it can therefore be necessary to curtail the park’s generation.