Transactive Systems Simulation and Valuation Platform Trial Analysis

Abstract

Transactive energy systems use principles of value to coordinate responsive supply and demand in energy systems. Work continues within the Transactive Systems Program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, to understand the value of, understand the theory behind, and simulate the behaviors of transactive energy systems. This report summarizes recent advances made by this program. The main capability advances include a more comprehensive valuation model, including recommended documentation that should make valuation studies of all sorts more transparent, definition of economic metrics with which transactive mechanisms can be evaluated, and multiple improvements to the time-simulation environment that is being used to evaluate transactive scenarios. v Summary Transactive system designs are intended to drive electric system operations toward an optimal balance of supply and demand at all levels of the grid. To accomplish this, they actively seek the engagement of all potentially responsive electrical assets, including customer-owned and third-party assets, through transparent, competitive means. This provides the flexibility required by tomorrow's power grid, whether generation shifts from centralized to more distributed resources or from dispatchable generation plants to intermittent renewables. Operating such a grid, capable of powering our society by providing the reliability and affordable electricity rates it demands, necessitates new operational flexibility from resources on a large scale. In order to do this at reasonable cost, much of this flexibility is expected to be derived from distributed assets such as continually responsive loads, distributed electrical and thermal storage, smart inverters for solar photovoltaic systems, electric vehicles, etc. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Transactive Systems Program (TSP) encourages the development of transactive designs that offer systematic, scalable, and equitable approaches for managing energy system operations. Because several designs have already been proposed, some have also been and demonstrated in the field, and more are sure to follow, the program works to inform decision makers on alternative transactive designs and their characteristics. It does this by developing a simulation environment capable of testing a variety of transactive system designs. This includes establishing a set of test scenarios with realistic models and data sets for testing such alternative transactive system designs. In addition, criteria and a disciplined process for evaluation are proposed as part of the TSP's valuation methodology element. The valuation criteria are supplemented with systemic criteria for measuring proper behavior of the transactive system being studied on topics such as scalability, optimality, and convergence. These are derived from TSP elements that contribute to a theoretical framework for transactive systems. This document reports on an early trial of the first year's progress developing an analy...

Transactive Energy Market for Energy Management in Microgrids: The Monash Microgrid Case Study

“…In active energy management, an optimization framework examines all flexible loads and generations to decide the best solution for the system, taking into account DERs data to incorporate their preferences in central optimization. Hence, bidirectional communication is needed for information exchange, which raises privacy concerns regarding private data of end-use DERs [39]. In both passive and active energy management approaches, the central operator is the decision maker for all of the system.…”

Transaction‐based operation of electric distribution systems: A review

“…The operation mechanism integrated to the market structure can be classified in the approaches detailed in Table 5. 29 In this classification, while double-auction mechanisms are based on one-time information exchange, where market clearing will occur on system marginal price, consensus mechanisms are based on iterative information exchange. 30 It is worth noticing what both Parag and Sovacool 1 and Widergren et al 29 comment on the role of the DSO in the P2P/bilateral trade models.…”

“…29 In this classification, while double-auction mechanisms are based on one-time information exchange, where market clearing will occur on system marginal price, consensus mechanisms are based on iterative information exchange. 30 It is worth noticing what both Parag and Sovacool 1 and Widergren et al 29 comment on the role of the DSO in the P2P/bilateral trade models. The first observes that the distribution system gets paid a management fee for the wire service, whereas the second highlights that there must be a mechanism to ensure that the traded energy is transported and conveyed properly.…”

“…So far, research on the topic of transaction-based energy systems has presented evaluation of its designed markets and systems based on a limited number of criteria. The recent study developed by Widergren et al 29 provides a classification of valuation metrics that can be applied as a broader analysis of different grid operation scenarios in valuation studies. This could be a helpful tool to compare the performance of different transaction-based market mechanisms.…”

eIoT

“…Recognizing that there is no "one size fits all" solution for interactions between the participants of the grid's techno-economic control loops [609], various groups have come forward to provide guidance in designing TE systems. The Transactive Systems Program (TSP) by the US Department of Energy aims to develop TE designs that offer "systematic, scalable, and equitable approaches for managing energy system operations [610]." The goal of TSP was to test existing TE designs to find an approach that is best-fit for the grid's multi-objective optimization problem.…”