Energy flexibility of the commercial greenhouse growers: The potential and benefits of participating in the electricity market

Commercial greenhouses can provide energy flexibility with artificial lighting usage and information and communications technology support. Therefore, commercial greenhouse growers can potentially play an important role in the electricity market as a flexibility service provider. With the application of a climate control software- DynaLight NG, this paper takes Danish commercial growers and the Nordic electricity regulating market as an example, to investigate the market potential with two business models: 1) commercial greenhouse growers directly participate in the regulating market, 2) to reduce balance responsible parties’ imbalance errors. Two calculations are formulated to evaluate the monetary benefits for the commercial greenhouse growers’ participation in the two business models. The results show that: 1) one big commercial greenhouse grower might get around 55,000 DKK/month by providing their electricity flexibility to the up-regulating market in the winter time by using the software DynaLight NG; 2) the whole Danish commercial greenhouse grower sector potentially can provide electricity flexibility of around 1.6 million DKK/month to the up-regulating market in winter. The positive results indicate the potentials and benefits for commercial greenhouse growers to participate in the electricity flexibility market.