Green Power Grids: How Energy from Renewable Sources Affects Networks and Markets

Mureddu, Mario; Caldarelli, Guido; Chessa, Alessandro; Scala, Antonio; Damiano, Alfonso

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135312

Cited by 32 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(62 reference statements)

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“…This misalignment has the potential to cause a number of operational problems for the electricity system if PV adoption becomes widespread [6]. These include increasing the required ramping rates for the grid [7], altering utilization factors for existing power plants [8], causing voltage and frequency reliability concerns [9,10], and increasing wholesale electricity price fluctuations [11]. In areas with very high local rates of solar CF(y) net cash flow in year y ($) ($) ∆t duration of time period t D i consumer i's yearly consumption (kWh) y year PV adoption, the local daytime electricity demand may be reduced to such an extent that over-generation occurs, due to the minimum running requirements of local thermal power plants in the system [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting battery adoption in the prosumer era

Barbour

González

2018

Applied Energy

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Solar photovoltaic (PV) has the potential to make an important contribution to global sustainability, however, the misalignment between solar production and residential demand presents challenges for widespread PV adoption. Combining PV and storage is one way that this challenge can be overcome. In this work, we use one year of smart meter data from 369 consumers in three different US regions and calculate their economic benefits from both PV and coupled PV-battery systems. We consider a range of different electricity pricing schemes from the consumer regions, including both Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) and Net-Energy-Metering (NEM) policies. Significantly, our work uses real demand data, real PV generation data and optimizes each individual consumer's battery operation to minimize their electricity bill. Furthermore, we study the effect of batteries on consumer self-sufficiency, which is important because increasing self-sufficiency is a primary motivating factor behind battery adoption. We find that PV is profitable for the majority of consumers with most current pricing scenarios but PV-battery systems are always less profitable. However, batteries can provide very significant increases in self-sufficiency and we find that a majority of consumers can exceed 70% self-sufficiency with a 20 kWh battery and a PV system that produces the equivalent of their consumption. This is compared to an average self-sufficiency of 35% with PV only. Finally, recognizing that a number of factors could lead to profitable batteries in future, we study the sensitivity of battery profitability to future electricity prices in a FIT scenario, also accounting for future decreases in PV and battery costs. We find that if PV-battery systems are to become better investments than PV-only for the majority of consumers, retail electricity prices above $0.40/kWh and FIT rates below $0.05/kWh are a likely requirement.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting battery adoption in the prosumer era

Barbour

González

2018

Applied Energy

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“…Following the methodology as proposed in [10], we combined agent based modeling with a description from statistical physics by calculating the power mismatch over an ensemble of configurations that differ by small deviations from a stable power grid configuration. The power mismatch entered as market volume in the energy balancing market, whose agents offer energy from a certain learned distribution of prices, until the missing amount of energy is covered by their offers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme prices in electricity balancing markets from an approach of statistical physics

Mureddu

Meyer‐Ortmanns

2018

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

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An increase in energy production from renewable energy sources is viewed as a crucial achievement in most industrialized countries. The higher variability of power production via renewables leads to a rise in ancillary service costs over the power system, in particular costs within the electricity balancing markets, mainly due to an increased number of extreme price spikes. This study focuses on forecasting the behavior of price and volumes of the Italian balancing market in the presence of an increased share of renewable energy sources. Starting from configurations of load and power production, which guarantee a stable performance, we implement fluctuations in the load and in renewables; in particular we artificially increase the contribution of renewables as compared to conventional power sources to cover the total load. We then forecast the amount of provided energy in the balancing market and its fluctuations, which are induced by production and consumption. Within an approach of agent based modeling we estimate the resulting energy prices and costs. While their average values turn out to be only slightly affected by an increased contribution from renewables, the probability for extreme price events is shown to increase along with undesired peaks in the costs.

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“…Improving coordination between TSO-DSO to unlock new flexible services that seek to optimise the distribution grid operations will encourage more active participation of the consumer in demand side response DSR [5]. However, as outdated perceptions of technology cost and performance continue, the centralised approach to energy production, delivery and consumption fails to cope with an evolving energy landscape [6][7][8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the use of thermal inertia in building stock to leverage decentralised demand side frequency regulation services

Williams

Short

Crosbie

2018

Applied Thermal Engineering

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Most governments are applying financial instruments and other polices to encourage distributed renewable electricity generation (DREG). DREG is less predictable and more volatile than traditional forms of energy generation. Closure of larger fossil-fuelled power plants and rising share of DREG is reducing system inertia on energy networks such that new methods of demand response are required. Usually participation in non-dynamic frequency response is reactive, affecting the duty cycle of thermostatically controlled loads. However, this can adversely affect building thermal efficiency. The research presented takes a proactive approach to demand response employing heat transfer dynamics. Here, thermal dynamics exhibit a significantly larger inertia than electrical power consumption. Thus, short-term fluctuations in energy use should have less effect on temperature regulation and user comfort in buildings than existing balancing services. A prototype frequency sensor and control unit for proactive demand response in building stock is developed. The paper reports on hardware-in-the-loop simulations, testing real thermal loads within a simulated power network. The instrumented approach adopted enables accurate real-time electrical frequency measurement, while the control method offers effective demand response, which suggest the feasibility of using decentralised frequency control regulation as a novel approach to existing demand response mechanisms. Keywords Frequency regulation; decentralised control; demand response. Nomenclature transport delay, s load damping constant, s Δ frequency deviation, Hz inertia time constant, s TCL controller integral gain ALFC secondary loop gain, p.u. MW/Hz s ℎ thermal load gain TCL controller proportional gain Δ step change in power demand, p.u. Δ change in hydraulic amplifier output Δ ℎ electrical power deviation, p.u. Δ change in turbine power output regulator, Hz/p.u. MW Δ temperature deviation, p.u. governor time constant, s ℎ thermal load time constant, s turbine time constant, s ̅ sample mean number of entries sample standard deviation standard error standardized test statistic

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Green Power Grids: How Energy from Renewable Sources Affects Networks and Markets

Cited by 32 publications

References 31 publications

Projecting battery adoption in the prosumer era

Projecting battery adoption in the prosumer era

Extreme prices in electricity balancing markets from an approach of statistical physics

On the use of thermal inertia in building stock to leverage decentralised demand side frequency regulation services

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