Provision of frequency containment reserve from residential battery storage systems: A German case study

In order to increase self-consumption (SC) more than half of the residential photovoltaic (PV) systems in Germany are installed with battery storage systems (BSS). The utilization of these BSSs however varies throughout the year and therefore they could be used for other services to further increase their profitability. Recent changes in regulation for frequency containment reserve (FCR) facilitate multi-use concepts and first aggregators are already prequalified for the German market. Against this background, we analyze the potential for the joint provision of FCR and SC increase from residential BSSs with a linear optimization model applied to 162 German households. Different scenarios including fixed shares of the BSS reserved for FCR, priorization of SC or a joint optimization of SC and FCR are examined. We find that fixed shares of FCR only lead to minimal additional financial benefits. Both, the joint optimization of FCR and SC and prioritizing SC lead to higher additional gains, while the loss in SC is low in both scenarios. Moreover, even when prioritizing SC still high shares of the BSS can be used for FCR. Only a significant increase in FCR prices leads to SC being sacrificed for higher FCR shares.