A New Vision on the Prosumers Energy Surplus Trading Considering Smart Peer-to-Peer Contracts

Abstract

A growing number of households benefit from government subsidies to install renewable generation facilities such as PV panels, used to gain independence from the grid and provide cheap energy. In the Romanian electricity market, these prosumers can sell their generation surplus only at regulated prices, back to the grid. A way to increase the number of prosumers is to allow them to make higher profit by selling this surplus back into the local network. This would also be an advantage for the consumers, who could pay less for electricity exempt from network tariffs and benefit from lower prices resulting from the competition between prosumers. One way of enabling this type of trade is to use peer-to-peer contracts traded in local markets, run at microgrid (μG) level. This paper presents a new trading platform based on smart peer-to-peer (P2P) contracts for prosumers energy surplus trading in a real local microgrid. Several trading scenarios are proposed, which give the possibility to perform trading based on participants’ locations, instantaneous active power demand, maximum daily energy demand, and the principle of first come first served implemented in an anonymous blockchain trading ledger. The developed scheme is tested on a low-voltage (LV) microgrid model to check its feasibility of deployment in a real network. A comparative analysis between the proposed scenarios, regarding traded quatities and financial benefits is performed.

New Market Model with Social and Commercial Tiers for Improved Prosumer Trading in Microgrids

“…In line with these trends, previous research efforts by the authors, published in [40], proposed an algorithm for prosumer surplus transactions at the microgrid level, using P2P contracts and blockchain technology. The market mechanism considers trading priorities set at central level and based on consumer or prosumer prices, or custom priorities determined by the prosumer-consumer geographical distances and the 'first-come-first-served' (FCFS) principle.…”

“…Using online platforms [40][41][42][43][44][45][46], the consumers can become prosumers who create and distribute their own information about the energy generation. Some authors proposed a demurrage mechanism (DM) and Home Energy Management (HEM) for prosumers' energy surplus in an LEM based on blockchain [41].…”

“…Methodologies based on the remote sensing of atmospheric conditions are the primary source of information for the development of numerical forecasting models that support the planning and operation of power systems in the presence of intermittent energy sources [49]. For local trading of such electricity surplus, the LEM operators consider the blockchain concept [11,12,16,28,29,40,41,48] or direct bilateral contracts [50,51]. These market models aim to provide secure and affordable energy supply for the end user, which is essential for the functioning of an economy in which energy poverty is reduced and the needs of vulnerable social groups are taken into account [52][53][54].…”

“…The primary market includes the blockchain approach from [40] and adds a supplementary trading method based on the merit order used in wholesale markets. These methods can be used as alternatives for trading.…”

“…• as actual consumption value measured in [W], when the price is set according to the blockchain priority model, as in [40]; • as a multiple of 100 W for the price setting according to the day-ahead merit order model used in wholesale markets.…”