An unparalleled conductor of the energy sharing and trading symphony
Digitalisation of the energy system creates the opportunity to use a wealth of optimisation and automation tools. These will help the EU integrate increasingly larger shares of renewable energy sources (RES) and distributed energy resources (DER) while ensuring efficiency, sustainability and real-time performance. A transactive energy market in which prosumers and other stakeholders share and trade energy in near-real time will foster efficiency and stability. Gone are the flat-price, end-of-month consumer energy bills, replaced by real-time cost-effectiveness driven by market incentives. The EU-funded PARITY project has delivered the technologies to support this. Its smart contract-enabled, transactive grid and local flexibility market platform backed by IoT and blockchain technologies facilitates energy and flexibility transactions on multiple levels.
IoT-enabled DER flexibility management tools
The PARITY IoT platform integrates heterogeneous DER assets and sensors and leverages blockchain technology for flexibility control and automated transactions. The PARITY aggregator toolset facilitates bundling and trading of flexibility resources, coupling prosumers to local energy, national energy and ancillary service markets. “Functionalities include prosumer flexibility estimation, cost minimisation, dynamic virtual power plant formation, and a bidding strategy using price forecasts for participation in the wholesale market (intraday) as well as the ‘frequency containment reserves for disturbances’ (FCR-D) ancillary services market,” explains project coordinator Dimitrios Tzovaras of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas. The PARITY storage-as-a-service framework includes virtual energy storage (power-to-heat or P2H) and actual storage (stationary batteries and electric vehicles (EVs)). The P2H model evaluates the thermal preferences of building occupants to uncover demand side flexibility. A stationary battery manager optimises battery use via functionalities including power peak shaving. The EV profiling and smart charging components implement AI-based algorithms for EV usage profiling, EV load and flexibility forecasting, and EV charging optimisation.
Smart grid monitoring and management tools
The distribution system operators (DSO) toolset performs automated smart grid monitoring and active management of network assets to optimally manage the low-voltage distribution network in the presence of increasing RES penetration. “It leverages the traffic light concept for signalling congestion in the grid and can forecast future grid states. It also provides scheduling and dispatch services. It can thus improve grid operation for both intraday and day-ahead scenarios,” Tzovaras explains. An innovative ‘distribution static synchronous compensator’ hardware for current balancing and voltage regulation addresses power instability and power quality restoration. It operates autonomously unless the active network management software tools forecast a grid problem, at which time the DSO toolset takes full control.
Impact assessment and policy/market reform recommendations
The PARITY system was successfully demonstrated in four pilots with different characteristics. A holistic solution evaluation and impact assessment considered the environmental and social impacts, technical performance, user acceptance and economic and market influences. Overall, “the PARITY solution offers financial benefits to participating prosumers, services to the DSO for greater grid stability, and services to external actors such as transmission system operators through participation in the ancillary services market. Participation in the FCR-D market and the day-ahead market through the aggregator seem to be the most profitable options,” notes Tzovaras. PARITY’s policy and market reform recommendations, backed by high end-user acceptance (87 %) and participant retention (73 %), should lead to broad, fair and sustainable deployment of local flexibility markets in Europe.
Keywords
PARITY, energy, DER, DSO, local flexibility market, blockchain, prosumers, smart grid monitoring, aggregator, battery, transactive energy, RES
