Practical Insights to Design a Blockchain-Based Energy Trading Platform

Today, the development of decentralized energy management systems has accelerated due to the daily growth of renewable energy technologies and communications infrastructure. At the distribution system level, this approach has manifested itself with the emergence of the local energy market. In fact, the local energy market is becoming a new operating model to control local generation units. This paper describes the general architecture and elements used to implement a blockchain-based local energy market within a transactive management platform. After an overview of internet of things (IoT) communication technologies and the existing central-authority-based applications, the general structure and elements of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are reviewed. Next, the concepts of blockchain-based technologies and the required specifications for different building layers are outlined based on the limited relevant literature available. The concepts and requirements are investigated to provide practical insights to design trading platforms

Local energy trading in future distribution systems

Today, the pace of development of decentralized transactive management systems has increased significantly due to growing renewable energy source technologies and communication infrastructure at the distribution system level. Such bilateral energy transactions have changed the structure of electricity markets and led to the emergence of a local energy market in electricity dis-tribution. While examining this change of attitude, this paper analyzes the effects of local market formation on the performance and performance of distribution companies. Accordingly, the technical requirements in the three areas of operation, network control, and ICT in the new workspace are thoroughly examined. The hardware requirements will be presented in two parts for the end-user and the distribution systems. Then, the proposed local distribution market framework will be introduced, and finally, the conclusion will be presented

Reliability modeling of process-oriented smart monitoring in the distribution systems

Smart monitoring systems are applied in smart grids to improve the reliability of the components. One of the functionality principles in these systems is to assess the potential rate of exposure to the failure of system components. To this end, appraisal of the failure rooting and origins for each component is a proper way to judge the system's status, and evaluation of the processes for the newly incoming components can be a possible solution. These processes consist of the phase of design, purchase, installation, and operation. This paper introduces a novel mathematical model to assess the reliability of the distribution networks integrated with the process-oriented smart monitoring systems. The model utilizes the Markov method and incorporates the effect of process failure factors on the overall system reliability. The proposed model is implemented on a real test system and investigated through simulations to study the different aspects of the problem. The results show significant benefits of the proposed model and reveal up to 90% improvement in the reliability of the system after employing smart monitoring systems

Optimal Home Energy Management for Electric Flexibility Provision

In the new smart grid paradigm, the residential prosumers can more actively participate in the energy exchange mechanisms by adjusting their consumption through demand response programs and their own available local generation and energy storage system. On these bases, a new model of home energy management system (HEMS) is proposed and analyzed in this paper. Numerical studies show that the proposed HEMS is able to find the optimal operating scenario in different situations and to achieve a reduction of the billing costs by providing some electric flexibility to an aggregator or to a system operator

A peak-load-reduction-based procedure to manage distribution network expansion by applying process-oriented costing of incoming components

Peak load reduction (PLR) is one of the applied strategies in demand response (DR) program to manage the costs of an electric distribution utility. Besides, this strategy can affect the costs of incoming new components (INC) from the utility viewpoint in the expansion phase, which consists of the processes of design, purchase, installation, and operation. Accordingly, considering these processes, this paper addresses a process-cost-oriented model seeing the PLR program to decide about the optimal investment value of network expansion. In the new paradigm, the costs of each process are identified, and the effect of PLR on these costs is analyzed. Moreover, to make optimal decisions, variations of the overall process costs and PLR program cost are investigated. A real case study is also provided to evaluate the capability of PLR using the proposed model. The results reveal that the overall cost is reduced by about 18%, due to the 5.7% reduction in the peak load

An economic demand management strategy for passive consumers considering demand-side management schemes and microgrid operation

In a modern power system, a consumer can economically meet its demand by choosing the right strategy. The first and most convenient option, but obviously not the economic one, is to buy energy directly from the different electricity markets. The next choice, to minimize costs, is to supply electricity using the local generations. The latter can evoke the concept of microgrid if self-sufficiency exists. Meanwhile, alongside these choices, demand-side management (DSM) schemes are efficient supplementary solutions in the economic provision of demand. In fact, the efficient strategies of microgrids and DSM can be applied to the customer side to enhance loads flexibility. Despite the provision of significant advantages, the economic operation of microgrids is one of the most critical challenges in the power system. In response to this challenge, DSM, which is an efficient strategy that has provided considerable potentials in the restructured power systems, can be the resolution. In this chapter, the impact of customers’ participation level in demand response (DR) programs alongside its operation in the form of microgrid are investigated from the economic point of view. An approach is proposed to evaluate the installation and operation costs of a microgrid versus DR cost to opt an economic demanding strategy for a large-scale consumer. Two DR programs including price-based DR (PDR) and incentive-based DR (IDR) are considered in the studies. The proposed model is implemented in three real case studies that are investigated through simulations to study the different aspects of the problem. The results illustrate significant benefits that are obtained by applying the proposed economic management

An Optimal Home Energy Management Paradigm with an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Regulation

In the smart grid paradigm, residential consumers should participate actively in the energy exchange mechanisms by adjusting their consumption and generation. To this end, a proper home energy management system (HEMS), in addition to achieving a high level of comfort for the consumers, should handle the practical difficulties due to the uncertainty and technical limits. With this aim, in this paper, a new HEMS is proposed to carry out day-ahead management and real-time regulation. While an optimal scheduling solution based on some forecasted values of uncertain parameters is achieved for day ahead management, real-time regulation is accomplished by an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, which can regulate the gaps between the forecasted and real values. Investigated case studies indicate that the proposed HEMS can find an optimal operating scenario with an acceptable success rate for real-time regulation

An Overview of Demand Response: From its Origins to the Smart Energy Community

The need to improve power system performance, enhance reliability, and reduce environmental effects, as well as advances in communication infrastructures, have led to demand response (DR) becoming an essential part of smart grid operation. DR can provide power system operators with a range of flexible resources through different schemes. From the operational decision-making viewpoint, in practice, each scheme can affect the system performance differently. Therefore, categorizing different DR schemes based on their potential impacts on the power grid, operational targets, and economic incentives can embed a pragmatic and practical perspective into the selection approach. In order to provide such insights, this paper presents an extensive review of DR programs. A goal-oriented classification based on the type of market, reliability, power flexibility and the participants' economic motivation is proposed for DR programs. The benefits and barriers based on new classes are presented. Every involved party, including the power system operator and participants, can utilize the proposed classification to select an appropriate plan in the DR-related ancillary service ecosystem. The various enabling technologies and practical strategies for the application of DR schemes in various sectors are reviewed. Following this, changes in the procedure of DR schemes in the smart community concept are studied. Finally, the direction of future research and development in DR is discussed and analyzed