PLEXOS® for Renewables

How does PLEXOS help?

Models market participant behaviour across all time frames

• Sub-hourly decisions

PLEXOS models the energy market clearing process by optimizing the supply and demand for every market clearing period, providing energy price forecasts and renewable capture prices.

• Mid-term operational decisions

Accurately simulate markets where longer term operational considerations are key, such as hydro heavy markets, as well as the impact of other long duration storage options such as hydrogen.

• Long-term expansion decisions

Develop future energy market Scenarios through simulating investor behaviour by considering the capital costs of potential new entrants to the market in order to automaticity determine the forecasted capacity mix. 

Simulation Ready Data
Energy Exemplar provides simulation ready data sets for energy markets across the globe, to allow you to start analyzing the future energy markets on day 1.  

Single unified engine for consistent decisions
Integrate all of this analysis into a single engine, with all phases of simulation interacting seamlessly with one another.

How does PLEXOS help?

Project Screening  
Given a potential set of technology alternatives, PLEXOS determines the optimal selection of technologies and relative installed capacities to maximize project profitability. PLEXOS unique stochastic optimization methodology allows for consideration of uncertainty in climatic conditions. 

Hydrogen & Emerging technology Analyze the investment opportunities associated with renewable & hydrogen
projects.

Battery Investment Projects
PLEXOS allows for the optimal schedule and dispatch of a mixed portfolio containing traditional assets, renewable assets, batteries and demand side management.

Gross-margin capture 
Provide detailed gross margin reporting of any asset, project or portfolio  considering the participation within all revenue streams such as day ahead, balancing and ancillary services markets.

How does PLEXOS help?

Optimal Project Sizing
PLEXOS will determine the optimal size of an asset to meet a given objective, subject to any constraints. An example could be the optimal sizing of a renewable & storage project to meet availability requirements of a defined PPA. 

Net Zero energy system design 
PLEXOS can be used to determine the cost-optimal energy system design required to meet a given decarbonization objective for a heavy energy consumer. 

Managing basis risk
When siting a renewable project, the developer must consider both the generation potential at that site, as well as the basis risk., PLEXOS is able to consider grid location when making investment decisions, considering both hub-node differentials as well as congestion risk.

How does PLEXOS help?

Evaluate Marchant Risk
PLEXOS risk analysis can be undertaken both at market level, providing a spread of possible market prices, as well as at portfolio level allowing computation of typical risk metrics such as VaR and PaR

Evaluating Power Purchase Agreements
PLEXOS enables renewable developers and operators to understand what a fair price for a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) is or evaluate the relative merits of a PPA vs energy market participation. Further, PLEXOS can support the development of PPA tariffs during tendering process’.  

Develop hedging strategies
PLEXOS allows the user to provide determine the optimal hedge based upon a given Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR). The model can also consider subsidy mechanisms such as Contract For Differences or financial instruments.

How does PLEXOS help?

Energy & Ancillary Services co-optimization
For assets, such as batteries, which can provide both energy and system services, PLEXOS optimizes the use of the battery for energy provision vs provision of the ancillary services. PLEXOS co-optimizes against all AS products.

SCADA integration 
PLEXOS can be integrated directly to real time control system such as SCADA EMS. Here the current operating conditions are passed to PLEXOS as initial status, and PLEXOS runs an economic dispatch optimization over the coming hours/days.

Second level resolution
PLEXOS supports resolution as low as one second. While traditional generation is generally dispatched on an hourly basis, the
intermittency associated with renewable generation calls for a lower level
of dispatch resolution.