This paper presents an advanced market bidding and operation strategy for the joint participation of a solar plant with storage in Energy and Secondary Reserve Markets (SRM). A linear optimization is applied in order to calculate the optimal day-ahead and intraday market bids through a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach, considering solar generation forecast, hourly market prices as well as battery acquisition, operating and degradation costs. Moreover, several rule-based strategies are selected to participate in secondary reserve markets, focused on more profitable and reliable hours through the estimation of market prices and the expected operation of the battery. Finally, the real-time operation tackles all the uncertain parameters, such as the reserve requirements and solar forecast errors, with the objective of achieving an optimal trade-off between market profits, battery costs and market technical fulfillments. Several market strategies have been compared in techno-economic terms with annual real market data. Regarding the most advanced strategy, market benefits are improved 6.42% from base case and non-fulfillment level of SRM is reduced up to 1.49%.

Real-time monitoring allows the determination of the line state and the calculation of the actual rating value. The real-time monitoring systems measure sag, conductor tension, conductor temperature, or weather-related magnitudes. In this paper, a new ampacity monitoring system for overhead lines, based on the conductor tension, the ambient temperature, the solar radiation, and the current intensity is presented. The measurements are transmitted via general-packet radio service to a control center where a software program calculates the ampacity value. The system takes the creep deformation experienced by the conductors during their lifetime into account and calibrates the tension-temperature reference and the maximum-allowable temperature in order to obtain the ampacity. The system includes hardware implementation and remote-control software.