Flexibility Modeling, Management, and Trading in Bottom-up Cellular Energy Systems

Abstract

Accelerated local deployments of renewable energy sources and energy storage units, as well as increased overall flexibility in local demand and supply through active user involvement and smart energy solutions, open up new opportunities (e.g., self-sufficiency and CO 2 neutrality through local renewables) and yet pose new challenges (e.g., how to maintain the security of supply and get the best yield) to market players in the lower parts of the energy system (including prosumers, energy communities, aggregators, and distribution system operators (DSOs)). One way to cope with the challenges requires "logical" reorganization of the energy system bottom-up as a number of nested (maximally) self-sufficient and interacting cells with their own local (i.e. within a cell) energy management and trading capabilities. This change necessitates effective IT-based solutions. Towards this goal, we propose a unified Flexibility Modeling, Management, and Trading System (FMTS) that generalizes flexibility modeling, management, and intra-cell trading in such cellular energy systems. Our system offers different flexibility provisioning options (Machine Learning based, and Model Predictive Control based), activation mechanisms (indirect and direct device-control), and trading schemes (e.g. flexibility contracts, market-based trading) and suits different cellular system use-cases. In this paper, we introduce the FMTS, overview its core functionality and components, and explain how it practically manages, prices, and trades flexibility from a diverse variety of loads. We then introduce the real-world FMTS instances developed in the GOFLEX project 1 and present experimental results that demonstrate significantly increased flexibility capacities, user gains, and balance between demand and supply when an FMTS instance is used in the simulated cellular energy system setting.

Designing Eco-Feedback Systems for Communities: Interrogating a Techno-solutionist Vision for Sustainable Communal Energy

“…The concept of sustainable communal energy has been investigated in the last couple of years in an effort to explore alternative future energy systems [101]. Despite the large amounts of attention from tech-driven fields to establish the vision of "energy communities" [12,17,41,56,98,99,103], the concept still appears somewhat intangible. Due to this, investigations are still exploring different understandings of this emerging concept.…”

“…Due to this, investigations are still exploring different understandings of this emerging concept. However, most of these investigations follow a techno-solutionist vision, focusing on the endless possibilities of new emerging energy technologies rather than human adoption [30,98,101].…”

“…The technosolutionist narrative of this vision assumes that if people are equipped with the 'right' technological artefacts that can provide the 'right' kind of information, they will become empowered to change habits effortlessly. Furthermore, this vision of an energy community emphasises financial gain as the primary motivational factor for changing consumer habits [60,98]. As an example, Mahesh et al [60] conceptualise smart energy communities supported by blockchain technology, which empower consumers to start trading renewable energy among members that are motivated by financial gains.…”

“…The vision of communal energy is to let householders cooperate as a unit in the pursuit of collectively acting sustainably [36,39,62]. In this, both individual household and communal actions are expected to influence how the energy system operates, while supported by new technology [60,98,100,103].…”

Identifying Challenges in Engaging Users to Increase Self-Consumption of Electricity in Microgrids

“…Another concept that frames people as participants is that of energy communities. An energy community could be interconnected on a broad scale or be more geographically concentrated, initiated by either community inhabitants or a local authority and motivated by the pursuit of self-sufficiency, CO 2 neutrality or reduced costs [42][43][44]. The constellation of actors in an energy community and their motivations for participating (or not) in these arrangements vary.…”