Make or buy: IT-based decision support for grid imbalance settlement in smarter electricity networks

Abstract

Decision (support) systems are a particularly important type of information system to energy informatics. A key challenge in energy informatics is that electricity supply must be in balance with demand at all times. More volatile renewable energy sources increase the relevance of electricity network balancing, i.e., imbalance settlement. Typically, electricity distribution network operators bought balancing power from external service providers (Buy option). Interestingly, however, more local energy resources help smarter electricity networks develop a Make option, as in our real-world evaluation. Choosing the better decision alternative within the relevant timeframes challenges human decision-making capabilities. Therefore, this research proposes a model-based decision system to improve the operators’ decisions concerning Make or Buy under various levels of data quality represented by availability, granularity, and timeliness. The study reports savings up to 40% of costs for imbalance settlement supporting ambitious development efforts by the municipality we study in our real-world evaluation.

Exploring the energy informatics and energy citizenship domains: A Systematic Literature Review

“…For example, in [48] a personalized tariff recommender is discussed that can be used to schedule more resource-intensive appliances when the energy tariff is low resulting in less consumption of expensive electricity power, a win-win for both the end consumer and energy-providing company. Another research on a similar line advocates the application of EI in making electricity by reducing energy consumption demand instead of buying expensive electricity at peak hours [51]. On the other hand, on the supply side, energy players may offer new choices to users to form a community of renewable energy-generating and consuming households [49].…”