No abstract

Due to guaranteed feed-in tariffs under the Renewable Energy Act and the feed-in precedence of renewable power generation plants the operation of biogas plants in Germany is currently plannable and economically advantageous. However, it is foreseeable that without this subvention biogas plants cannot compete with other regenerative plants such as photovoltaic and wind power plants on the open electricity market. Accordingly, it is of great importance for biogas plant operators to identify and occupy suitable niches to make full use of the unique features of their plants. Because of their predictable availability, those plants can particularly benefit of earning opportunities in times of high demand and contribute to grid stabilization. In order to keep the effort for plant operators as low as possible the automation of existing biogas plants can be extended and enabled to communicate with market platforms or control centers of the distribution system operator. Thus biogas plants can contribute to balancing group compensation not only for accounting purposes but factual by appropriate feed-in into the electrical network in consideration of actual demand.