Guidance Needed for Economic Modeling of a 1 MWh Standalone Energy Storage

I am in Texas(ERCOT area), where the electricity market is deregulated. I intend to develop a standalone energy storage facility (excluding solar), with a capacity of 1 MWh, to participate in the wholesale market's demand response. How should I perform economic modeling for this project? The primary profit mechanism is to charge during low price periods and discharge during high price periods. Could you please advise?

Hi Francisco,

You can use SAM's Standalone Battery / Merchant Plant configuration to model a standalone storage facility that charges and discharges in response to time series price data and calculate financial metrics like net present value and internal rate of return.

The "front of meter" videos on the Battery Videos page might be helpful for learning more about how the model works: sam.nrel.gov/battery-storage/battery-videos.html .

The Merchant Plant page has information about the merchant plant financial model, including a video: sam.nrel.gov/financial-models/merchant-plant.html

SAM's Help system includes Getting Started and Reference sections that might be helpful as you learn to use SAM. It also has detailed descriptions of the inputs for each input page. You can access it by clicking Help or pressing the F1 key.

Best regards,
Paul.