State-Of-The-Art and Prospects for Peer-To-Peer Transaction-Based Energy System

Transaction-based energy (TE) management and control has become an increasingly relevant topic, attracting considerable attention from industry and the research community alike. As a result, new techniques are emerging for its development and actualization. This paper presents a comprehensive review of TE involving peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading and also covering the concept, enabling technologies, frameworks, active research efforts and the prospects of TE. The formulation of a common approach for TE management modelling is challenging given the diversity of circumstances of prosumers in terms of capacity, profiles and objectives. This has resulted in divergent opinions in the literature. The idea of this paper is therefore to explore these viewpoints and provide some perspectives on this burgeoning topic on P2P TE systems. This study identified that most of the techniques in the literature exclusively formulate energy trade problems as a game, an optimization problem or a variational inequality problem. It was also observed that none of the existing works has considered a unified messaging framework. This is a potential area for further investigation

Market-oriented micro virtual power prosumers operations in distribution system operator framework

As the European Union is on track to meet its 2020 energy targets on raising the share of renewable energy and increasing the efficiency in the energy consumption, considerable attention has been given to the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) into the restructured distribution system. This thesis proposes market-oriented operations of micro virtual power prosumers (J.lVPPs) in the distribution system operator framework, in which the J.lVPPs evolve from home-oriented energy management systems to price-taking prosumers and to price-making prosumers. Considering the diversity of the DERs installed in the residential sector, a configurable J.l VPP is proposed first to deliver multiple energy services using a fuzzy logic-based generic algorithm. By responding to the retail price dynamics and applying load control, the J.lVPP achieves considerable electricity bill savings, active utilisation of energy storage system and fast return on investment. As the J.lVPPs enter the distribution system market, they are modelled as price-takers in a two-settlement market first and a chance-constrained formulation is proposed to derive the bidding strategies. The obtained strategy demonstrates its ability to bring the J.l VPP maximum profit based on different composition of DERs and to maintain adequate supply capacity to meet the demand considering the volatile renewable generation and load forecast. Given the non-cooperative nature of the actual market, the J.l VPPs are transformed into price-makers and their market behaviours are studied in the context of electricity market equilibrium models. The resulted equilibrium problems with equilibrium constraints (EPEC) are presented and solved using a novel application of coevolutionary approach. Compared with the roles of home-oriented energy management systems and price-taking prosumers, the J.lVPPs as price­ making prosumers have an improved utilisation rate of the installed DER capacity and a guaranteed profit from participating in the distribution system market

Market-oriented micro virtual power prosumers operations in distribution system operator framework

As the European Union is on track to meet its 2020 energy targets on raising the share of renewable energy and increasing the efficiency in the energy consumption, considerable attention has been given to the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) into the restructured distribution system. This thesis proposes market-oriented operations of micro virtual power prosumers (J.lVPPs) in the distribution system operator framework, in which the J.lVPPs evolve from home-oriented energy management systems to price-taking prosumers and to price-making prosumers. Considering the diversity of the DERs installed in the residential sector, a configurable J.l VPP is proposed first to deliver multiple energy services using a fuzzy logic-based generic algorithm. By responding to the retail price dynamics and applying load control, the J.lVPP achieves considerable electricity bill savings, active utilisation of energy storage system and fast return on investment. As the J.lVPPs enter the distribution system market, they are modelled as price-takers in a two-settlement market first and a chance-constrained formulation is proposed to derive the bidding strategies. The obtained strategy demonstrates its ability to bring the J.l VPP maximum profit based on different composition of DERs and to maintain adequate supply capacity to meet the demand considering the volatile renewable generation and load forecast. Given the non-cooperative nature of the actual market, the J.l VPPs are transformed into price-makers and their market behaviours are studied in the context of electricity market equilibrium models. The resulted equilibrium problems with equilibrium constraints (EPEC) are presented and solved using a novel application of coevolutionary approach. Compared with the roles of home-oriented energy management systems and price-taking prosumers, the J.lVPPs as price­ making prosumers have an improved utilisation rate of the installed DER capacity and a guaranteed profit from participating in the distribution system market

Game-Theoretic and Machine-Learning Techniques for Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience in Smart Grid

The smart grid is the next-generation electrical infrastructure utilizing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), whose architecture is evolving from a utility-centric structure to a distributed Cyber-Physical System (CPS) integrated with a large-scale of renewable energy resources. However, meeting reliability objectives in the smart grid becomes increasingly challenging owing to the high penetration of renewable resources and changing weather conditions. Moreover, the cyber-physical attack targeted at the smart grid has become a major threat because millions of electronic devices interconnected via communication networks expose unprecedented vulnerabilities, thereby increasing the potential attack surface. This dissertation is aimed at developing novel game-theoretic and machine-learning techniques for addressing the reliability and security issues residing at multiple layers of the smart grid, including power distribution system reliability forecasting, risk assessment of cyber-physical attacks targeted at the grid, and cyber attack detection in the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and renewable resources. This dissertation first comprehensively investigates the combined effect of various weather parameters on the reliability performance of the smart grid, and proposes a multilayer perceptron (MLP)-based framework to forecast the daily number of power interruptions in the distribution system using time series of common weather data. Regarding evaluating the risk of cyber-physical attacks faced by the smart grid, a stochastic budget allocation game is proposed to analyze the strategic interactions between a malicious attacker and the grid defender. A reinforcement learning algorithm is developed to enable the two players to reach a game equilibrium, where the optimal budget allocation strategies of the two players, in terms of attacking/protecting the critical elements of the grid, can be obtained. In addition, the risk of the cyber-physical attack can be derived based on the successful attack probability to various grid elements. Furthermore, this dissertation develops a multimodal data-driven framework for the cyber attack detection in the power distribution system integrated with renewable resources. This approach introduces the spare feature learning into an ensemble classifier for improving the detection efficiency, and implements the spatiotemporal correlation analysis for differentiating the attacked renewable energy measurements from fault scenarios. Numerical results based on the IEEE 34-bus system show that the proposed framework achieves the most accurate detection of cyber attacks reported in the literature. To address the electricity theft in the AMI, a Distributed Intelligent Framework for Electricity Theft Detection (DIFETD) is proposed, which is equipped with Benford’s analysis for initial diagnostics on large smart meter data. A Stackelberg game between utility and multiple electricity thieves is then formulated to model the electricity theft actions. Finally, a Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT) is utilized to detect potentially fraudulent meters

Intelligent Energy Management for Microgrids with Renewable Energy, Storage Systems, and Electric Vehicles

The evolution of smart grid or smart microgrids represents a significant paradigm shift for future electrical power systems. Recent trends in microgrid systems include the integration of renewable energy sources (RES), energy storage systems (ESS), and plug-in electrical vehicles (PEV or EV). However, these integration trends bring with then new challenges for the design of intelligent control and management system. Traditional generation scheduling paradigms rely on the perfect prediction of future electricity supply and demand. They can no longer apply to a microgrid with intermittent renewable energy sources. To mitigate these problems, a massive and expensive energy storage can be deployed, which also need vast land area and sophisticated control and management. Electrical vehicles can be exploited as the alternative to the large and expensive storage. On the other hand, the use of electrical vehicles introduces new challenges due to their unpredictable presence in the microgrid. Furthermore, the utility and ancillary industries gradually adding sensors and power aware, intelligent functionality to home appliances for the efficient use of energy. Hence, the future smart microgrid stability and challenges are primarily dependent on the electricity consumption patterns of the home appliances, and EVs. Recently, demand side management (DSM) has emerged as a useful method to control or manipulate the user demand for balancing the generation and consumption. Unfortunately, most of the existing DSM systems solve the problem partially either using ESS to store RES energy or RES and ESS to charging and discharging of electrical vehicles. Hence, in this thesis, we propose a centralized energy management system which jointly optimizes the consumption scheduling of electrical vehicles and home appliances to reduce the peak-hour demand and use of energy produced from the RESs. In the proposed system, EVs store energy when generation is high or during off-peak periods, and release it when the demand is high compared to the generation. The centralized system, however, is an offline method and unable to produce a solution for a large-scale microgrid. Further, the real-time implementation of the centralized solution requires continuous change and adjustment of the energy generation as well as load forecast in each time slot. Thereby, we develop a game theoretic mechanism design to analyze and to get an optimal solution for the above problem. In this case, the game increases the social benefit of the whole community and conversely minimizes each household's total electricity price. Our system delivers power to each customer based on their real-time needs; it does not consider pre-planned generation, therefore the energy cost, uncertainty, and instability increase in the production plant. To address these issues, we propose a two-fold decentralized real-time demand side management (RDCDSM) which in the first phase (planning phase) allows each customer to process the day ahead raw predicted demand to reduce the anticipated electricity cost by generating a flat curve for its forecasted future demand. Then, in the second stage (i.e., allocation phase), customers play another repeated game with mixed strategy to mitigate the deviation between the immediate real-time consumption and the day-ahead predicted one. To achieve this, customers exploit renewable energy and energy storage systems and decide optimal strategies for their charging/discharging, taking into account their operational constraints. RDCDSM will help the microgrid operator better deals with uncertainties in the system through better planning its day-ahead electricity generation and purchase, thus increasing the quality of power delivery to the customer. Now, it is envisioned that the presence of hundreds of microgrids (forms a microgrid network) in the energy system will gradually change the paradigms of century-old monopolized market into open, unbundled, and competitive market which accepts new supplier and admits marginal costs prices for the electricity. To adapt this new market scenario, we formulate a mathematical model to share power among microgrids in a microgrid network and minimize the overall cost of the electricity which involves nonlinear, nonconvex marginal costs for generation and T&D expenses and losses for transporting electricity from a seller microgrid to a buyer microgrid

ReSCon '10, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The third SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2010) was hosted over three days, 21-23 June 2010, in the Hamilton Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of oral and poster presentations, which showcased the high quality and diversity of the research being conducted within the School of Engineering and Design. The abstracts and presentations were the result of ongoing research by postgraduate research students from the School. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

Resource Allocation and Service Management in Next Generation 5G Wireless Networks

The accelerated evolution towards next generation networks is expected to dramatically increase mobile data traffic, posing challenging requirements for future radio cellular communications. User connections are multiplying, whilst data hungry content is dominating wireless services putting significant pressure on network's available spectrum. Ensuring energy-efficient and low latency transmissions, while maintaining advanced Quality of Service (QoS) and high standards of user experience are of profound importance in order to address diversifying user prerequisites and ensure superior and sustainable network performance. At the same time, the rise of 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) evolution is transforming wireless infrastructure towards enhanced heterogeneity, multi-tier architectures and standards, as well as new disruptive telecommunication technologies. The above developments require a rethinking of how wireless networks are designed and operate, in conjunction with the need to understand more holistically how users interact with the network and with each other. In this dissertation, we tackle the problem of efficient resource allocation and service management in various network topologies under a user-centric approach. In the direction of ad-hoc and self-organizing networks where the decision making process lies at the user level, we develop a novel and generic enough framework capable of solving a wide array of problems with regards to resource distribution in an adaptable and multi-disciplinary manner. Aiming at maximizing user satisfaction and also achieve high performance - low power resource utilization, the theory of network utility maximization is adopted, with the examined problems being formulated as non-cooperative games. The considered games are solved via the principles of Game Theory and Optimization, while iterative and low complexity algorithms establish their convergence to steady operational outcomes, i.e., Nash Equilibrium points. This thesis consists a meaningful contribution to the current state of the art research in the field of wireless network optimization, by allowing users to control multiple degrees of freedom with regards to their transmission, considering mobile customers and their strategies as the key elements for the amelioration of network's performance, while also adopting novel technologies in the resource management problems. First, multi-variable resource allocation problems are studied for multi-tier architectures with the use of femtocells, addressing the topic of efficient power and/or rate control, while also the topic is examined in Visible Light Communication (VLC) networks under various access technologies. Next, the problem of customized resource pricing is considered as a separate and bounded resource to be optimized under distinct scenarios, which expresses users' willingness to pay instead of being commonly implemented by a central administrator in the form of penalties. The investigation is further expanded by examining the case of service provider selection in competitive telecommunication markets which aim to increase their market share by applying different pricing policies, while the users model the selection process by behaving as learning automata under a Machine Learning framework. Additionally, the problem of resource allocation is examined for heterogeneous services where users are enabled to dynamically pick the modules needed for their transmission based on their preferences, via the concept of Service Bundling. Moreover, in this thesis we examine the correlation of users' energy requirements with their transmission needs, by allowing the adaptive energy harvesting to reflect the consumed power in the subsequent information transmission in Wireless Powered Communication Networks (WPCNs). Furthermore, in this thesis a fresh perspective with respect to resource allocation is provided assuming real life conditions, by modeling user behavior under Prospect Theory. Subjectivity in decisions of users is introduced in situations of high uncertainty in a more pragmatic manner compared to the literature, where they behave as blind utility maximizers. In addition, network spectrum is considered as a fragile resource which might collapse if over-exploited under the principles of the Tragedy of the Commons, allowing hence users to sense risk and redefine their strategies accordingly. The above framework is applied in different cases where users have to select between a safe and a common pool of resources (CPR) i.e., licensed and unlicensed bands, different access technologies, etc., while also the impact of pricing in protecting resource fragility is studied. Additionally, the above resource allocation problems are expanded in Public Safety Networks (PSNs) assisted by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), while also aspects related to network security against malign user behaviors are examined. Finally, all the above problems are thoroughly evaluated and tested via a series of arithmetic simulations with regards to the main characteristics of their operation, as well as against other approaches from the literature. In each case, important performance gains are identified with respect to the overall energy savings and increased spectrum utilization, while also the advantages of the proposed framework are mirrored in the improvement of the satisfaction and the superior Quality of Service of each user within the network. Lastly, the flexibility and scalability of this work allow for interesting applications in other domains related to resource allocation in wireless networks and beyond

Peer-to-peer energy trading in electrical distribution networks

In response to the challenges posed by the increasing penetration of distributed generation from renewable energy sources and the increasing electricity retail prices with decreasing Feed-In Tariff rates, a new energy trading arrangement, “peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading” has been proposed. It refers to the direct energy trading among consumers and prosumers in distribution networks, which is developed based on the “P2P economy” concept (also known as sharing economy). A hierarchical system architecture model has been proposed in order to identify and categorise the key elements and technologies involved in P2P energy trading. A P2P energy trading platform called “Elecbay” is designed. The P2P bidding is simulated using game theory. Test results in a grid-connected LV Microgrid with distributed generators and flexible demands show that P2P energy trading is able to improve the local balance of energy generation and consumption, and the enhanced variety of peers is able to further facilitate the balance. Two necessary control systems are proposed for the Microgrid with “Elecbay”. A voltage control system which combines droop control and on-load-tap-changer (OLTC) control is designed and simulated. Simulation results show that the proposed voltage control system is sufficient for supporting the P2P energy trading in the Microgrid. The total number of operation times of the OLTC is reduced with P2P energy trading compared to the reference scenario. The information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures for the P2P bidding platform and the voltage control system are investigated. The information exchange among peers and other parties (Elecbay, distribution system operators, etc.) is designed based on TCP/IP protocol. Existing and private communication networks with different communication medium, bandwidths, etc., are modelled. Simulation results show that the existing ICT infrastructures are sufficient for supporting both the P2P energy trading platform and the voltage control system. Therefore, no large amount of additional investments are required