| dc.description.abstract | Current power systems are being transformed by the extensive integration of inter- mittent Renewable Energy Sources (RES) motivated by the will to cut down global CO2 emissions. The recent decrease in solar technology costs and deployment of smart meters has fostered a bottom-up restructuring of the electricity sector. End- users are no longer seen as passive consumers with inelastic power demand, but they are envisioned to be at the center of newly designed power systems. Especially the ever-growing shares of intermittent energy sources call for an increase in the power system’s flexibility. Recent attention has been devoted to demand-side manage- ment solutions, requiring few investments in the grid. Moreover, the development of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) led to a new type of end-users capable of producing and storing their own energy – the so-called prosumers – further questioning the current structure of electricity markets.
This Master’s thesis investigates the role of end-users in tomorrow’s power sector. The purpose of the analysis is twofold: in the first study that forms part of this thesis, we assess the value of residential Demand Response (DR) for the European power system. Additionally, we examine how the development of DERs within a Local Energy Community (LEC) participates in the empowerment of electricity end-users. These two points are the core of our Master’s thesis, presented in the format of one conference paper and one journal paper:
The first paper has been submitted to the European Energy Market Conference of 2022. We seek to demonstrate how flexibility provided by residential end-users helps to integrate large-scale renewable technologies at the lowest cost in Europe. To that end, we include DR as an operational option in a two-stage stochastic capacity expansion model combining short-term decisions subject to uncertainty with long-term planning decisions. We examine the development of prices, capacity investments, and power generation until 2060. Our findings suggest that the implementation of residential DR programs in Europe reduces the total system cost by 1% and proves to be an excellent alternative to grid scale Li-ion battery storage.
The second paper is a journal paper that has been written with the intention of being submitted to the Energy & Buildings journal. To make better use of the DERs emerging among residential buildings, we present a centralized Local Electricity Market (LEM) within a LEC where participants trade Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and jointly interact with the wholesale market. In an effort to highlight prosumers’ empowerment enabled by the deployment of DERs and smart meters, we introduce the novel concept of Cooperative Retailer. Through the Cooperative Retailer, the community takes on the responsibilities of a traditional retailer by trading directly
on the wholesale market and assuming balancing responsibility. We conduct a risk analysis of the bidding strategy of the community to understand how uncertainty of Photovoltaic (PV) production and market prices affect their behavior. Our modeling results show that the risk aversion of the community determines its preference whether to trade on the Day-ahead (DA) or Intraday (ID) market. Also, P2P trading has shown potential to increase community’s autarky and decrease costs. | |