Source: Vision Research Institute

China Energy Storage Network: On January 18, German power trading company Next Kraftwerke (Next Generation Power Plant) will be responsible for overseeing the trading of most of the electricity from Germany's recently commissioned 600 MW Witznitz Energy Park, which supplies power to its parent company Shell.

In 2021, Next Kraftwerke, one of Europe's largest virtual power plant operators, was acquired by oil giant Shell Overseas Investments BV from venture capital investors.

"The renewable energy trading market is highly dynamic. In the coming years, we expect a rapid increase in demand for power trading contracts for renewable energy plants that have been removed from support programs or built outside the support system. In order to provide an ideal positioning for existing customers and further development in this market, and to meet the industry's demand for new products, we decided to establish a partnership with Shell Renewables & Energy Solutions." Next Kraftwerke co-founder Jochen Schwill said.

1. Next-generation power plants that disrupt the industry

Next Kraftwerke GmbH is a spin-off company founded in 2009 by two doctoral students at the Energy Economics Institute (EWI) at the University of Cologne, Jochen Schwill and Hendrik Sämisch. Jochen Schwill is a trained industrial engineer, while Hendrik Sämisch is an experienced economist.

The two realized the challenges of energy transition to grid stability very early on.

"When Hendrik Sämisch and I were writing our doctoral thesis, we wanted to know how to balance the increasing share of intermittent renewable energy in the system in the future. That's when we started thinking about flexibility and how we could quickly balance the unstable inflow of renewable energy.".

Therefore, Hendrik Sämisch and Jochen Schwill came up with the idea of ​​integrating emergency generators, wind turbines and biogas power plants to compensate for grid fluctuations.
"The increasing use of renewable energy has brought many questions to grid operators in countless countries: Where does the electricity come from? Where does it go? What will happen in four hours? We can tell you how much electricity is generated by renewable energy at each grid intersection at this moment, we can visualize this process, and we can predict what will happen in four hours. In the next five years, these questions will become increasingly important in every country on the planet, and we hope to use our technology to provide answers." The two founders said.
Then they found investors, quit their jobs at the Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne, rented an office in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, and founded the clean technology company Next Kraftwerke.
The founders believe that the difference between the company and the energy industry lies in machine learning and weather forecasting.
"The traditional energy industry has not yet become a real competitor. What we do has nothing to do with them - from their point of view, we focus on technology and meteorology. That's why we focus on interesting technological developments. This is still a rather abstract competition, but we have to face it. For example, we need machine learning and algorithms to improve our weather forecasts."

2. Optimization is the main theme

Next Kraftwerke provides a total of three services.
Power Trading: Next Kraftwerke provides market access to major European power exchanges and is one of the largest traders of renewable power in Europe. This includes EPEX SPOT as well as day-ahead and intraday short-term platforms, balancing services and futures platforms as well as OTC trading on EXAA and other European power exchanges. With its long experience as an international power trader, Next Kraftwerke’s 24/7 trading floor offers trading solutions ranging from simple power trading to highly specialized products to optimize the dispatch of its clients’ assets.
Power trading relies heavily on real-time data, accurate forecasts, smart dispatch and trading platforms.
In terms of real-time data, Next Kraftwerke can access real-time input data from more than 10,000 assets, including weather-dependent energy sources such as wind and solar, through VPP alone. This is a unique advantage because the more data used, the more accurate the forecast.
In terms of forecasts, weather data is continuously updated based on Next Kraftwerke’s own meteorological analysis as well as market data from multiple exchanges. The data pool grows with each trading day that passes. New data is constantly compared to historical values ​​to steadily reduce forecast errors.
In terms of smart dispatch, whether selling power from a single asset or managing a portfolio through Next Kraftwerke's VPP, Next Kraftwerke's detailed forecasts balance any excess or shortage quantities and help customers sell power at the best price.
On the trading platform, NEXTRA is a trading and portfolio management platform that allows a variety of participants to easily enter the electricity market. NEXTRA enables utilities, balancing responsible parties or consumers (commercial and industrial) to manage their assets themselves. Possibilities include trading excess or shortage quantities, balancing a portfolio or directly procuring the energy needed for consumption. In addition, aggregators and large power producers can also manage their assets through NEXTRA. The easy-to-use interface provides all needs in terms of forecasting, trading and analysis.