Energy Contract Settlements through Automated Negotiation in Residential Cooperatives

This paper presents an automated peer-to-peer (P2P) negotiation strategy for settling energy contracts among prosumers in a Residential Energy Cooperative (REC) considering heterogeneous prosumer preferences. The heterogeneity arises from prosumers' evaluation of energy contracts through multiple societal and environmental criteria and the prosumers' private preferences over those criteria. The prosumers engage in bilateral negotiations with peers to mutually agree on periodical energy contracts/loans that consist of an energy volume to be exchanged at that period and the return time of the exchanged energy. The prosumers keep an ordered preference profile of possible energy contracts by evaluating the contracts from their own valuations on the entailed criteria, and iteratively offer the peers contracts until an agreement is formed. A prosumer embeds the valuations into a utility function that further considers uncertainties imposed by demand and generation profiles. Empirical evaluation on real demand, generation and storage profiles illustrates that the proposed negotiation based strategy is able to increase the system efficiency (measured by utilitarian social welfare) and fairness (measured by Nash social welfare) over a baseline strategy and an individual flexibility control strategy. We thus elicit system benefits from P2P flexibility exchange already with few agents and without central coordination, providing a simple yet flexible and effective paradigm that may complement existing markets.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted in IEEE SGComm 201

Automated peer-to-peer negotiation for energy contract settlements in residential cooperatives

This paper presents an automated peer-to-peer negotiation strategy for settling energy contracts among prosumers in a Residential Energy Cooperative considering heterogeneity prosumer preferences. The heterogeneity arises from prosumers' evaluation of energy contracts through multiple societal and environmental criteria and the prosumers' private preferences over those criteria. The prosumers engage in bilateral negotiations with peers to mutually agree on periodical energy contracts/loans consisting of the energy volume to be exchanged at that period and the return time of the exchanged energy. The negotiating prosumers navigate through a common negotiation domain consisting of potential energy contracts and evaluate those contracts from their valuations on the entailed criteria against a utility function that is robust against generation and demand uncertainty. From the repeated interactions, a prosumer gradually learns about the compatibility of its peers in reaching energy contracts that are closer to Nash solutions. Empirical evaluation on real demand, generation and storage profiles – in multiple system scales – illustrates that the proposed negotiation based strategy can increase the system efficiency (measured by utilitarian social welfare) and fairness (measured by Nash social welfare) over a baseline strategy and an individual flexibility control strategy representing the status quo strategy. We thus elicit system benefits from peer-to-peer flexibility exchange already without any central coordination and market operator, providing a simple yet flexible and effective paradigm that complements existing markets

Automated Negotiation of Smart Contracts for Utility Exchanges between Prosumers in Eco-Industrial Parks

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Markets of prosumers trading utility surpluses (e.g., heating, cooling, or electric power) is a plausible realization of industrial symbiosis for companies in Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) in order to reach significant economic benefits and cut emissions. Through the synergistic co-generation and trading of utilities and industrial services, a P2P Market design makes room for socially desirable behavior despite the inherent selfish nature of each prosumer company. In this paper, a P2P Market prototype for the automated negotiation of utilities between prosumers in an EIP is proposed as a mechanism design to encourage prosumers to participate in trading surpluses. Blockchain transactions and Smart Contracts, combined with Internet of Things (IoTs) technology such as smart meters, are the implementation means to secure that the terms of exchange agreed upon will be automatically enforced. During the simulation of the EIP, each prosumer (represented by a negotiation agent) chooses whether to negotiate with another prosumer or to buy or sell its surpluses to a traditional service provider, such as a main electric power service provider or a gas provider, according to a previously learned policy while considering the context it is immersed in. Utilities between prosumers are exchanged based on a digital currency, the token, which could be readily implemented over Ethereum/Solidity platforms. Smart contract negotiations between prosumers revolve around agreeing (or not) on the price expressed in tokens of a utility profile, given the private and public information available to different parties. Simulation results highlight how automated negotiations allow prosumers to reach higher profits in the P2P Market from trading utility surpluses.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Peer-to-peer, community self-consumption, and transactive energy: A systematic literature review of local energy market models

Peer-to-peer, community or collective self-consumption, and transactive energy markets offer new models for trading energy locally. Over the past five years, there has been significant growth in the amount of academic literature examining how these local energy markets might function. This systematic literature review of 139 peer-reviewed journal articles examines the market designs used in these energy trading models. A modified version of the Business Ecosystem Architecture Modelling framework is used to extract market model information from the literature, and to identify differences and similarities between the models. This paper examines how peer-to-peer, community self-consumption and transactive energy markets are described in current literature. It explores the similarities and differences between these markets in terms of participation, governance structure, topology, and design. This paper systematises peer-to-peer, community self-consumption and transactive energy market designs, identifying six archetypes. Finally, it identifies five evidence gaps which require future research before these markets could be widely adopted. These evidence gaps are the lack of: consideration of physical constraints; a holistic approach to market design and operation; consideration about how these market designs will scale; consideration of information security; and, consideration of market participant privacy

Energy Community in Action—Energy Citizenship Contract as Tool for Climate Neutrality

Cities are responsible for 65% of energy consumption and for the 70% of CO2 emissions. Incisive actions are fundamental to bring cities towards climate neutrality by 2050 working by and for the citizens. For this reason, the “100 climate-neutral cities Mission” anticipates the target of climate neutrality by 2030. The objective of this paper, developed within the H2020 GRETA project—GReen Energy Transition Actions (GA101022317), is to investigate energy communities and climate city contracts as key interventions to face the ambitious goal of implementing citizenscentered and climate-neutral cities. To achieve this objective, this paper is structured as follows: (1) an updated framework of European and Italian legislation concerning energy communities; (2) an overview of climate city contracts’ definition and key aspects; (3) a selection and analysis of energy communities’ case studies; (4) a description of already developed pilot climate city contracts. The results provide more advanced knowledge about EU energy communities strategies and about the possible contractual agreements that can guarantee commitment between parties and can allow the active participation of citizens in the energy system. The lessons learned contribute to the application in the GRETA Italian case study, whose first participation activities are also described in the paper

A Systematic Literature Review of Peer-to-Peer, Community Self-Consumption, and Transactive Energy Market Models

Capper, T., Gorbatcheva, A., Mustafa, M. A., Bahloul, M., Schwidtal, J. M., Chitchyan, R., Andoni, M., Robu, V., Montakhabi, M., Scott, I., Francis, C., Mbavarira, T., Espana, J. M., & Kiesling, L. (2021). A Systematic Literature Review of Peer-to-Peer, Community Self-Consumption, and Transactive Energy Market Models. Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3959620Peer-to-peer and transactive energy markets, and community or collective self-consumption offer new models for trading energy locally. Over the past 10 years there has been significant growth in the amount of academic literature and trial projects examining how these energy trading models might function. This systematic literature review of 139 peer-reviewed journal articles examines the market designs used in these energy trading models. The Business Ecosystem Architecture Modelling framework is used to extract information about the market models used in the literature and identify differences and similarities between the models. This paper identifies six archetypal market designs and three archetypal auction mechanisms used in markets presented in the reviewed literature. It classifies the types of commodities being traded, the benefits of the markets and other features such as the types of grid models. Finally, this paper identifies five evidence gaps which need future research before these markets can be widely adopted.publishersversionpublishe

Inclusive Waste Governance and Grassroots Innovations for Social, Environmental And Economic Change

Participants of two research projects (Recycling Networks: Grassroots resilience tackling climate, environmental and poverty challenges (funded by the Swedish Research Council) and Mapping Waste Governance (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) collaborate in offering a critical inter- and transdisciplinary perspective on waste and waste actors (waste picker cooperatives, associations, community-based organizations, partnerships, networks and NGOs). The research is conducted in the following cities: Buenos Aires (Argentina), S\ue3o Paulo (Brazil), Vancouver and Montreal (Canada), Kisumu (Kenya), Managua (Nicaragua) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Together we examine the challenges that innovative grassroots initiatives and networks encounter in generating livelihoods to improve household waste collection and recycling, particularly in informal settlements of global South cities. We seek to map waste governance and successful waste management initiatives, arrangements and policies involving grassroots initiatives. In this report, we present a brief description of solid waste governance in the cities where we conducted fieldwork. We then illuminate some of our findings on grassroots innovations involving waste pickers or waste workers in these cities. Both research projects combine multi-case studies of waste picker groups and local government initiatives, apply qualitative research tools and participatory action research (e.g. photo voice, participant observation, workshops, surveys and interviews). We are interested in understanding processes, challenges and opportunities related to how these grassroots initiatives and networks operate to bring about socio-environmental and economic change? How they address challenges and what the assets are in everyday waste governance that can be explored to make waste governance more sustainable and thus more inclusive? Researchers involved in these two projects, key stakeholders from grassroots initiatives in these countries, representatives from some international waste picker networks and local and regional government officials from Kisumu, Kenya, met between 23rd and 29th of April 2018, in Kisumu to present and discuss the results of the first year of research activities, which are herewith documented