2,197 research outputs found
Peer-to-peer and community-based markets: A comprehensive review
The advent of more proactive consumers, the so-called "prosumers", with
production and storage capabilities, is empowering the consumers and bringing
new opportunities and challenges to the operation of power systems in a market
environment. Recently, a novel proposal for the design and operation of
electricity markets has emerged: these so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity
markets conceptually allow the prosumers to directly share their electrical
energy and investment. Such P2P markets rely on a consumer-centric and
bottom-up perspective by giving the opportunity to consumers to freely choose
the way they are to source their electric energy. A community can also be
formed by prosumers who want to collaborate, or in terms of operational energy
management. This paper contributes with an overview of these new P2P markets
that starts with the motivation, challenges, market designs moving to the
potential future developments in this field, providing recommendations while
considering a test-case
A System Complexity Approach to Swarm Electrification
The study investigates a bottom-up concept for microgrids. Financial analysis is performed through a business
model approach to test for viability when replacing a researched energy expenditure baseline in Bangladesh. A
literature review compares the approach to current trends in microgrids. A case study of Bangladesh illustrates the
potential for building on the existing infrastructure base of solar home systems. Opportunities are identified to improve
access to reliable energy through a microgrid approach that aims at community-driven economic and infrastructure
development by building on network effects generated through the inclusion of localized economies with strong
producer-consumer linkages embedded within larger systems of trade and exchange. The analysed approach
involves the linking together of individual stand-alone energy systems to form a microgrid that can eventually
interconnect with present legacy infrastructure consisting of national or regional grids. The approach is likened to
the concept of swarm intelligence, where each individual node brings independent input to create a conglomerate of
value greater than the sum of its parts
Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview
The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity networkâthe smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio
An Exchange Mechanism to Coordinate Flexibility in Residential Energy Cooperatives
Energy cooperatives (ECs) such as residential and industrial microgrids have
the potential to mitigate increasing fluctuations in renewable electricity
generation, but only if their joint response is coordinated. However, the
coordination and control of independently operated flexible resources (e.g.,
storage, demand response) imposes critical challenges arising from the
heterogeneity of the resources, conflict of interests, and impact on the grid.
Correspondingly, overcoming these challenges with a general and fair yet
efficient exchange mechanism that coordinates these distributed resources will
accommodate renewable fluctuations on a local level, thereby supporting the
energy transition. In this paper, we introduce such an exchange mechanism. It
incorporates a payment structure that encourages prosumers to participate in
the exchange by increasing their utility above baseline alternatives. The
allocation from the proposed mechanism increases the system efficiency
(utilitarian social welfare) and distributes profits more fairly (measured by
Nash social welfare) than individual flexibility activation. A case study
analyzing the mechanism performance and resulting payments in numerical
experiments over real demand and generation profiles of the Pecan Street
dataset elucidates the efficacy to promote cooperation between co-located
flexibilities in residential cooperatives through local exchange.Comment: Accepted in IEEE ICIT 201
Business models in the Smart Grid: challenges, opportunities and proposals for prosumer profitability.
Considering that non-renewable energy resources are dwindling, the smart grid turns out to be one of the most promising and compelling systems for the future of energy. Not only does it combine efficient energy consumption with avant-garde technologies related to renewable energies, but it is also capable of providing several beneficial utilities, such as power monitoring and data provision. When smart grid end users turn into prosumers, they become arguably the most important value creators within the smart grid and a decisive agent of change in terms of electricity usage. There is a plethora of research and development areas related to the smart grid that can be exploited for new business opportunities, thus spawning another branch of the so-called ?green economy? focused on turning smart energy usage into a profitable business. This paper deals with emerging business models for smart grid prosumers, their strengths and weaknesses and puts forward new prosumer-oriented business models, along with their value propositions
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