No abstract

The use of distributed energy resources (DERs) in a city contributes to the net zero CO2 of a city. However, the spatially uneven distribution of power demand and surplus electricity causes congestion in the grid system, making wide‐area operation difficult. The concept of local energy self‐sufficiency via energy management, in which batteries or electric vehicles are charged using power generated by DERs and discharged to neighbouring consumers, is expected to be a way to avoid grid conjunction while maximizing the use of DERs. For efficient local energy self‐sufficiency, it is necessary to identify where and when future power surpluses and shortages will occur within a city and optimize battery operation according to demand. Forecasts that focus only on representative points of a city may be less reproducible in diversity in the power demand transition for individual consumers in local parts of cities. Electricity smart meters that monitor power demand every 30 min from each consumer are expected to help predict the spatiotemporal distribution of power demand to achieve efficient local energy self‐sufficiency. The significance of reflecting regional characteristics in forecasting spatiotemporal distribution of power demand is demonstrated using actual data obtained by smart meters installed in Japanese cities. The results suggest that the forecast approach, which considers the daily periodicity of power demand and weather conditions, obtains high prediction accuracy in predicting power demand in meshed local areas in the city and derives results precisely reproducing the spatiotemporal behaviours of power demand.

Local energy self‐sufficiency, in which the supply and demand of electricity are controlled such that the generated power from distributed energy resources (DERs) is consumed locally based on a power supply‐and‐demand forecast, mitigates the burden on the power system and contributes to the efficient use of DERs in smart cities. However, widely available smart metres cannot measure behind‐the‐metre pure demand and generation from prosumers. Pure demand and generation forecasts without additional metering contribute to advanced supply‐and‐demand control in smart cities, including demand response. This study proposes a method of forecasting spatio‐temporal behaviours of behind‐the‐metre pure demand and generation by focussing on the information of net demand distribution observable from the smart metres; the proposed method initially predicts the spatio‐temporal net demand distribution with a combined forecaster based on the persistence and non‐parametric regression models, and then separately estimates the behind‐the‐metre pure demand and generation by using demand forecast result of neighbouring pure‐consumers extracted by considering the area‐scale behaviours of the smart metering data. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method provides accuracy comparable to forecasts conducted by directly measuring pure demand and generation, without requiring the installation of additional metres.

No abstract