About Pondera 

Since our founding in 2007, we have been at the forefront of renewable energy solutions. As a relatively young company with a wealth of experience, we're dedicated to solving energy, climate and environmental challenges. Our work ranges from small initiatives to global projects in onshore and offshore wind, solar, hydrogen and energy storage. In 2024, Pondera joined forces with Royal HaskoningDHV, an independent international consulting engineering company leading the way in sustainable development and innovation since 1881. Together we combine engineering, design and consultancy with innovative technology to deliver sustainable innovation around the world.

Battery revenue analysis

The increasing renewable energy generation in the Netherlands poses new challenges for grid operators to cope with the increased volatility. A possible solution is to implement large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the grid. These BESSs can generate revenues by trading on different electricity markets. These markets operate from small to large time scales, i.e. seconds up to days. In order to better understand the financial feasibility of a BESS in the Netherlands we developed a detailed financial model of the different electricity markets available for a BESS to trade on.

The project

Pondera is looking for a student who wants to use his or her econometrics skills to improve the model. Our model is written in Python and uses long-term electricity price predictions combined with historical and future installed renewable energy production capacity to determine detailed price spreads of the various electricity markets in the Netherlands. We use these price spreads to predict the trading behaviour of a battery on the various available markets and use this to determine its potential revenue. This provides a valuable tool for investors to determine whether a BESS can have a viable business case under the provided constraints.

Since the production capacity of renewable generation has been expanding rapidly in recent years leading to low and sometimes even negative prices on the market, more batteries and other flexible assets like e-boilers and electrolysers are being connected to the grid vying for the same low-priced bids. And as an econometrics student, you know what this means: price spreads will deflate, making the actual business case less positive than based on current market data. We therefore want to understand how price elasticity will influence markets and price predictions. Therefore, we want to add price elasticity and corresponding cross market price effects into our model that can correct predictions based on the growth in deployment of flexibility assets, supply-demand scenarios and regulation.

Your role

We are looking for a student who wants to spend his/her master thesis (minimum of 4 months fulltime) in our company, although we also welcome internships. We ask that you are familiar with price elasticity and how to incorporate this into financial prediction models and preferably that you are familiar with Python or MATLAB programming. Prior knowledge of renewable energy is less important, we are happy to make you familiar with it. In this role, you will become part of the Data Analytics & Modelling team that uses Python and various advanced modelling tools to make detailed predictions for different types of energy use.

You will be working from our office in Arnhem, located next to the central station. If you are interested in the project or have any further questions, please contact Nienke Firet n.firet@ponderaconsult.com.