Power demand forecasting for demand-driven energy production with biogas plants

For the future energy system it becomes increasingly important that biogas plants produce electricity in a demand-oriented way to compensate electricity production from fluctuating sources like wind power and photovoltaics. Flexibilisation concepts provide a coordinated feeding management, which consider different gas production kinetics of used substrates to adjust the biogas production. To enable the generation of a prospective timetable, suitable forecast models for power demand were evaluated. The resulting 48-h forecasts of power demand of a real-world laboratory demonstrated that the four selected models achieve comparably good results with a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) be-tween 13 and 16%. Further evaluation showed that forecasts over longer periods of up to 14 days are advantageous as they are possible without compromising forecast quality. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

In the future energy system, it is increasingly important for biogas plants to produce electricity to compensate for fluctuating sources of wind power and photovoltaics. Flexibility concepts provide coordinated feeding management and suitable forecast models for power demand to adjust biogas production and generate future schedules.